


Synapse

by TheModernChromatic



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Homophobia, M/M, POV First Person, Reincarnation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-30
Updated: 2014-05-28
Packaged: 2018-01-21 08:38:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 25,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1544561
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheModernChromatic/pseuds/TheModernChromatic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The memories are gone now, but some things carry over from lives past, preserved and lost somewhere in the synapses of the mind.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This was supposed to be for eruren week but I haven't posted anything in f o r e v e r so here I am with the first chapter of ~3

He doesn’t remember me. It may be that he never remembers me, and rightly so if he doesn’t. I’m not entirely sure if I want him to. Times were different then, and sometimes I wish I didn’t remember myself. It was a world of fear, of pain, one where the sun shone, and you felt the heat on your skin without its seeping warmth, just heat. The blue of the skies there was always hiding something, even if there wasn’t a cloud to be seen. Here, it’s different. Lax. Here, you can breathe--humidity aside. But he doesn’t remember it. I know, because he smiles so wide.

I pass by him every day on my way to work.

I walk, because for some reason, karma doesn’t work and my sins were not repaid to me in kind, and I grew up privileged and admired, and inherited a job I never wanted that supplies me with money I don’t need. It’s not what I deserve for sending men to die as my career in the last life. I was anticipating hell, not walking by an organic grocery store every morning because I don’t want a driver and I feel sick to my stomach whenever I think about driving the expensive car in my garage. I’d rather walk under the honest sky, on the solid, paved ground and pass young workers toting tomatoes for their mother’s store. Sometimes it even lets me pretend I didn’t lose hundreds of men in my years as commander.

It’s kinda nice, starting over.

My memories came to me as I grew up, as if they were things I’d always known, more instinct than knowledge. At first they were stories in my head, and I wrote them down and told them to anyone who would listen. Around six or seven, I started to realize that the man in the stories was rather like me, and by nine I’d reached the conclusion that they were memories. They seemed far-fetched, and it was a concept even I thought I would grow out of, but affirmation came later on. High school, I came across living proof that my memories were real and that my old life had leaked into this one.

“Erwin?”

Levi had stared at me so incredulously, and I at him until I had a panic attack and he escorted me to the nurse. When we were alone and I had calmed down, he confirmed everything with memories of his own. I didn’t mind it, having someone to share the memories with, but after high school we decided it was best to try to live in the lives we were in, rather than in the dark one we’d come from, and I haven’t talked to him since.

Things were fine for a long while, five, six years, maybe. I went to college and lived a normal life, despite the strange memories that most often manifested themselves in dreams. I didn’t meet anyone from that life there, and I went through the motions like everyone else. It came in my refusal of the luxury I didn’t deserve. Had I been able to let go of the blood on my hands from my past life, perhaps I could’ve embraced the riches of this one, but I couldn’t. I took to commuting to my father’s company by foot, and that’s how I came across him again.

I didn’t panic like I did when I saw Levi--the strangeness of seeing a person you thought you’d imagined isn’t quite as sharp a second time. I stopped and I watched him work slowly, from the window of the shop. I stopped for so long the commuters moved around me like a river around a stone, and when he saw me and there was no flicker of recognition in his eyes, just a polite smile that one might offer to a stranger when eye contact is made, and I forced my feet to move again. It didn’t stop me from making a habit out of walking to work. It’s a bad habit at this point, and try as I might, I can’t help but think about it every time I pass him. He doesn’t remember me.

These words ring in my head every time, as he carries things in and out of the store, as he sets up the external displays with care, as he dusts his hands on his apron habitually before he shakes hands with a customer, and as I mindlessly crash into him, carrying a crate of apples for display this morning.

“Ah, sorry!” He apologizes, even though he’s on the ground and there are apples everywhere and people are going around them and he’s only barely knocked me back. “I didn’t see you there.”

“No, it’s fine.” I bend to help gather the apples. “Not your fault, really,” I add as a second thought.

“Oh, you don’t have to--” he takes the apples from my hands and sets them in the crate with practiced hands. The crate is propped up on a table and he stands, brushing his hands on his apron. I’m still. Something in my mind tells me normal people would’ve dismissed themselves by now. His eyes flicker up at me and he smiles. He’s older than I remember, much older up close. Older than me for sure.

“Thank you,” he says, and I give a curt nod. It should be my cue to leave, but I stand dumb and idle. He squints at me a little. “Do I know you from somewhere?”

It makes my breath catch, but just a little. Levi was so sure of everything. He hadn’t hesitated in the slightest. I give a polite smile and reply calmly.

“I walk by here every day to work.” It should be sufficient.

“No, no. Something else. You just look really familiar.”

“I suppose I just have a familiar face. Can’t imagine where you would know someone like me from. You look older than me by a bit.”

I shouldn’t have added the last part. It was irrelevant and unnecessary, and I shouldn’t have added it. It was more me reflecting on the situation than even saying anything worthwhile, but he just laughed.

“Yeah, I suppose so. Business men don’t typically end up in the same place as their grocers. Thank you for the help though.”

I thought that would be the end of it, but he stuck out his hand and I skipped a beat before I realized I should shake it. It was a harmless gesture to him, but for me it solidified him as more than a figment of my imagination, and sometimes I tried to fool myself into thinking that’s all he was. I wasn’t ready for it at all, but I shook it anyway.

“I’m Eren.” His eyes dart to his nametag and he laughs. “As you can see.”

“Erwin,” is my reply. I’m stiff and curt, and he has to be thinking that I don’t like him by now. I give him my best smile--at least as far as ‘strangers’ go--and continue on my way.

“Nice meeting you!”

He shouts it after me, and I can’t help but feel I’ve ruined some sort of equilibrium.

He greets me every morning. Once, I oversleep and rush by, but he stops me and hands me a pear, somehow knowing that I’ve skipped breakfast in my rush. I want to hate him for it. Where is the angry young boy whose only desire is revenge? It pains me that I can only conjure that image of him, furious, with the silver scars of bite marks on his hands. I certainly wouldn’t have imagined what a dreamer he would be without his hunger for vengeance.

He calls me ‘kid’. It’s all in jest; he can’t be more than five years older than me, but he does it.

It rains one morning, and my important meeting is cancelled over the phone on my way to work because this businessman or that can’t get there because his flight has been delayed due to the weather. The rain must be worse by the airport, because I keep walking, stop in a coffee shop and wait out the rush. When it clears, I keep walking, keep walking. Inevitably, I land in front of his shop, where he’s still dismantling the exterior displays. He doesn’t notice me until I hold my umbrella over him and relieve him of the rain that has cleared the streets of everyone else. When he turns to me, confused, I move unconsciously, and silently hope that things have carried over from the past life, even if he doesn’t remember it.

The way he returns my kiss assures me that they have.

He comes away dazed and baffled, and he opens his mouth to say something before promptly sneezing. He laughs instead and tells me we should get out of the rain, holds the door open to his shop so I can go inside. I leave my umbrella outside. I sit quietly in the chair behind the counter he’s led me to while he goes into a little room nearby, wondering if I’ve just made some horrible mistake. I could leave. Get up, grab my umbrella and go home. I could start driving to work, or take the subway, or something. Anything. I’m a link to a past he doesn’t remember, and maybe shouldn’t. I could leave and all that would be left of me would be the chime of the bells on the door.

I stay and he comes back with two mugs of tea. He stirs his pensively, eyes my wet suit and blows on his tea to cool it. Mine sits idly in my hands.

“No work today?”

“No, the meeting was cancelled. They’ll want me back after lunch.”

“Oh.” A beat. “Are you alright, Erwin?”

The way he says my name is not unlike the way he called me commander in the other life, but there are differences. His voice is deeper, more confident, he stands taller--and not just because he’s fully grown now--and he smiles. He smiles so wide.

I don’t know what to say, so I set the tea on the counter, stand, and guide his face up to mine and kiss him softly. His hands don’t move from the mug, and he stays slouched against the counter, but he moves his mouth with mine in slow, delicate motions.

“I’m sorry. I’ve wanted to do that for awhile now.” At least it’s not a lie, and I can smile when I say it.

I watch him smile into his mug as he sips again. His eyes flicker up at me over the rim of it as he drinks.

“After lunch, hm?” He says it into his tea, steam floating up around his cheeks. I try not to think of the last time I saw him surrounded by steam.

“That’s the idea.”

“Well, are you free for dinner?”

He catches me so off-guard I can’t answer him for a moment. I try to think of what I should do in this situation, what a normal person would do if they weren’t bogged down by dark memories that the other person doesn’t share.

“Dinner sounds great. Is seven good?”

“Seven is fine.”

“Alright, I’ll pick you up.” Then I add, “My treat.”

“Good,” Eren chuckles, surprising me. I’m used to polite refusal. “You started this anyway.”

I want to tell him how wrong he is, but he doesn’t remember who really started this anymore. After a few hours, I leave with his number punched into my phone. There’s nothing productive to be done at work, not with my father’s old assistant in town making sure things are running smoothly. They always are. Still, I’m there for longer than I need to be.

There’s no need for him to say anything as he climbs into my car, idling silently outside his shop, the only sound its softly purring engine. He doesn’t need to say anything because I can tell what he’s thinking. With a car like mine, why on earth do I walk every morning? And maybe he has an answer to his own question.

His life is beautiful. Hearing about it all over again is a pleasure. Of course, there are differences, by a large margin; his father isn’t a missing enigma, and he never murdered anyone rescuing his sister, but the similarities are there. His mother died of cancer a few years ago and left him the shop, he was an angry youth who started fights and got in trouble, and his determination is still unshakeable. But it’s better. All of it is better, brighter. There is no broken wall, no plague of mankind.

He’s seen the ocean.

I keep the details about my life to a minimum. I’m still not even sure which life to consider real. But I let him talk, never once thinking that he loved to talk, but simply never got the chance and again I am filled with guilt. How much joy did I take away from him, a child, a mere boy of fifteen? The responsibility on his shoulders was tremendous, and he blamed himself for every death that I caused.

Being with him is torment, but I can’t tear myself away. It hurts to think that there was a time when I thought recruiting him meant fulfilling his wishes and saving his life from the hands of the military police, but I cannot summon the logic anymore. This world has tainted me in that aspect, and I cannot fathom how I ever resorted to using such brutal means. I need to leave him, let him live his life without me and the horrible past I bring with me. I excuse myself, stand, and the chair slides back with me. I’ll find the waiter, leave a note with them that says I’m terribly sorry, but I just can’t. Something vague, something he won’t blame himself for. I’m thinking of the right words and looking for the waiter, standing and getting ready to walk away and save him from me.

“Where are you going?”

I’ve given something away. Nearly four decades in the last life and two in this one and I still can’t keep my face from revealing my true intentions, or maybe he’s just entirely too perceptive.

“Oh, just--” and I have to think of a lie on the spot because his face is too genuine, too hopeful and I can’t bear to leave. “These pants are too short and they keep riding up.”

I adjust them by tugging at the knees and he stands too. We’ve been done eating for hours.

“How ‘bout we get out of here? I’m sure the waiter is tired of us by now. We’ve been here for--” he checks his watch. “Almost two hours now.”

I nod and drop a bill from my wallet for the check and the tip. I have to pretend not to notice how Eren’s eyebrows disappear into his hair at that. Somehow, we end up at my apartment, the small one I’ve rented because the family home is more than I can stomach. I haven’t discussed it and he’s too polite to ask, but the affluence is visible even in the apartment I’ve found.

“So what exactly do you do?”

He relaxes on my couch freely, peering around curiously. This is not the timid boy with swollen cheeks having dried blood cleaned off his face by Hanji, not in the slightest.

“International business. Petroleum industry, for the most part, but there’s some mechanics in it too.”

“Well, I mean--” Eren picks up one of the aged wines I have on display on the wall behind the couch. They were a gift, but still, the money. “I’ve known plenty of businessmen who have to pat every pocket they’ve got trying to pay for groceries, and this…”

He’s prying, and I let him.

“You could call me an heir, of sorts. I got my position thanks to my father’s death.”

“What, CEO?”

“CFO.” He was joking, but I’m not. The unworthiness burns. “My mother took CEO. She’s better suited for it, if you ask me. That left CFO open, and she appointed me.”

I sit next to him on the couch, which is large enough to leave plenty of space between us.

“Must be nice, being a millionaire at twenty.” He sets the wine back and eyes me.

“Twenty-three.” I pause and add, “And I never wanted any of it.”

He just stares at me for a moment with one eyebrow quirked. I watch him studying my face and marvel at how natural he looks on my expensive couch, framed by expensive wines, in the middle of my expensive apartment. I wish I could trade him for it, for a quiet life working my mother’s grocery by myself in her honor.

“Is that why, then?”

“Is what why?”

“Why you always walk to work. I know that company. The headquarters are in the center of the city, at least ten minutes from my shop by foot. And your car--”

“Yes, Eren, that’s why. I don’t want it.” My voice is distant and quiet.

He sighs softly and takes it upon himself to crawl across the couch and leave a ghost of a kiss on my lips. I think I try to say something, but he seems to change his mind about going easy and kisses me hard enough to knock me onto my back. I hear him breathe in sharply, and there’s one from me to match. He’s on my stomach, slightly between my knees and the way he’s kissing me, I know what he’s getting at. I pull away for a moment.

“Eren…” I glance at the precarious situation we’re in and he apologizes, pecks me on the cheek and settles for laying his head under my chin. He’s moved his hips off to the side, but it doesn’t change anything for me and I curse the inconvenience of such a young body. I sigh enough to move him with the motion, and he clings closer.

“Can I stay?”

“Stay?”

“I just,” he falters. “For some reason I really don’t want to leave.”

Leave. Leave here, leave you. The fact that he can’t, doesn’t want to makes my chest hurt because he’s said things like this before. I’m glad I’m above him, because he can’t see my eyes water at the thought.

“Yeah. I’d like that.”

I let him borrow some clothes, although they don’t fit him very well, and I find an extra toothbrush I bought some time ago and forgot about. I’m sitting on my bed when he comes back finished getting ready, and he sets one knee on the mattress before stopping himself.

“Is this alright? I can sleep on the couch if you want.”

“No, it’s fine. I trust you.”

I wonder how strange it sounds, coming from me. It feels strange to say, because I’m not used to being the younger one, the one whose intentions should be purer. But then, he wouldn’t think anything of it. His whole life, I’ve been younger than him. I take a moment for myself and decide I must confirm something before I can sleep.

“Eren.”

“Yeah?”

“How old are you?”

He lies down next to me and studies my face with his strange green eyes, just barely lit by the lamp behind me in the near-darkness.

“Twenty-nine.”

I nod, saying nothing, and he curls up to me. Holding him is like diving into a memory, but for how much taller he is now. Everything is different but for one thing. We are not huddled together for warmth. I have both of my arms and his hands are devoid of u-shaped scars from where I have asked too much of him. There is a bed beneath us, and not a sack on the floor because we are on the run. We’re not surrounded by our sleeping comrades, and he’s not here because he can’t sleep any more than I can. But with my nose in his hair, I’m both sickened and comforted to find that he smells almost exactly the same.

He confirmed it, though. Six years before Levi and I were executed for treason, Eren went down in the field. I couldn’t trade an arm to save him that time.

He becomes a part of my life, even more so than before, more than in the last life. Unthinkably, I find myself glad for the six years I lived without him, because it brought us closer in age, and here there are no Wallists to condemn us for being men. There are others, but in a metropolitan city they are few and far between. He becomes the part that is not monotony, not the enforcement of undeserved wealth. He becomes knocking on the glass of the door after he’s turned the ‘open’ sign in his window and turned off half the lights, two warm cups of tea because coffee needs too many things to taste good and Eren prefers the naturalness of pouring tea and drinking it right away.

I see how modestly he lives when I lose control of myself kissing him, hands wandering too far and too greedily and all I can choke out is a needy “Please…”

“My apartment,” he breathes. “It’s upstairs.”

I don’t notice how simple everything is until afterwards, when he’s cleaned up and passed out in my arms and I’m staring at the ceiling fan as it rotates slowly, wobbling slightly. It’s sparsely decorated, the only notable thing in the room aside from the bed being an oversized window, advertising his shop and letting in the lights of the city at night through the blinds. The bathroom casts rays onto the floor from the hall where he left the light on, but everything is so simple. There’s hardly anything on the floor, but for what we took off. Aside from the bed and windows, there’s a small night stand by the bed, and two doors--one to the hallway and the other presumably to a closet--but the room is utterly featureless.

He sighs in his sleep and shifts in my arms and I find myself wishing again I could trade him. Lives, I mean. If anyone deserves to live luxuriously, if karma actually worked, it would be Eren as the heir to an international company. If I could, I’d hand over my name and my title, the keys to my car and apartment, the gate code to the family manor outside the city--anything else I could give away. If I could begin to repay my debts, I would. But no money can do that, and if I tried to use it to supplement, he would only wonder why.

And I can’t tell him that.

I can only hold him close and let him doze to the sound of my heartbeat, slow and resilient. I wonder quietly if the beating in my chest is the same, if it spans lifetimes. I wonder if he’ll hear it and remember.

I shake myself of that. I know the course of things by now, and really it’s how it should be. He can listen to my heart all night if he wants, and I can fall asleep breathing in memories, but in the morning, it will all be the same. He will wake, maybe in my arms, maybe sprawled out elsewhere, close to me, or hogging all the blankets, and it will be the same. He won’t remember me. Only what is here and now.

For that, I can only thank whatever deity keeps him from remembering.

>>>

_“Commander?”_

_The voice is barely more than a whisper, just outside my door. Two wisps of knocks follow, and then again. Commander._

_I rouse myself from my desk, dressed in my nightclothes where I’ve hoped doing so might motivate me to sleep, but nothing changes. I’m pouring over the plans left by Pixis, looking for any kind of flaw I can fix. Most unfortunately, all I can see are flaws. There are a hundred variables that could change this or that. Everything is a bank of hopes, and we need a miracle or we’ll all fail miserably._

_Somehow, no surprise comes from finding Eren at my door._

_“Eren?”_

_“I’m sorry, commander. I can’t sleep.”_

_“You’re anxious?”_

_He fidgets._

_“Something like that.”_

_“Tea, to calm the nerves, then. Come in. I was just about to make some.”_

_It not a lie, though I don’t mention that my intent was to make tea to keep me awake for longer. He gives a small nod as he steps across the threshold, and his eyes land on where I’ve left the lantern and the papers going over the plans. He sits quietly at the table and I shuffle along, setting the kettle on the fire and putting away the energy tea I was planning on making, trading it for chamomile._

_“What’s on your mind?” I ask, even though I don’t need to. There’s a myriad of things that could be bothering him, but they all boil down to the same thing. Still, his answer surprises me._

_“My mother.”_

_“Why’s that?”_

_He gets a glassy look on his face and chews on the end of his sleeve absentmindedly. It’s a nervous habit, I’m sure. He used to bite his nails until Levi found out and made him clean the stables top to bottom for being so careless. The right motivation, a slip of the teeth, and he’d make a scene._

_“Whenever things get bad, I think of her.”_

_I’m at a loss for words for a moment, tending the kettle silently while I remind myself how young he is. He’s still just a boy, and I know his history. I know how young he was when he witnessed the cataclysmic events of Shiganshina and the breach of Wall Maria. Then, his mother. To be so young and afraid, without a mother and a missing father, forced out of a home--he is so strong. Sometimes I forget how young he is, because no child could possibly go through all of that without growing up in an instant. Not that any child can afford the luxury of childhood these days. Perhaps that’s what we’re really fighting for._

_“She was an amazing woman, I’m sure.”_

_“I don’t remember much of her, to be honest. But there was a time before all of this…”_

_“A very, very long time ago, Eren. Keep in mind that out of sight doesn’t mean out of mind. Just because the wall was intact doesn’t mean that they ceased to exist.”_

_It’s unnecessarily harsh, and I think to apologize for being rude, but my kettle hisses and I reach for it, and when I look back, there’s a small smile on his lips._

_“That’s true. I wanted to join the Survey Corps, even then, did you know? Even before the wall was breached. She didn’t want me to go, but I…” he sighs. “I wanted to see the ocean.”_

_I hand him a mug of tea and he holds it thoughtfully._

_“You think we’ll ever get that far?”_

_“To the ocean? We’re not really even sure where it is. It’s too dangerous out there, Eren. We’d never make it with so many titans roaming around.” I can’t help but chuckle. “You’ll end up like me--” I lift the stump of my arm and its ghost sleeve flops uselessly. “Or worse.”_

_“Yeah, but I’ve already lost an arm. And a leg. And then both arms at the same time. Losing them multiple times kinda takes the fun out of it.”_

_“Yes, yes. Yours grow back like creepy lizard limbs, don’t rub it in.”_

_I’m surprised at how quickly things grew lighthearted. I’ve never been able to spend much time with Eren, and as a whole I’d never pictured him as being capable of such joy, or invoking such ease._

_He drinks his tea quietly, plain and still steaming._

_“No honey?” I’ve stirred more than enough into mine._

_“I...like it by itself. We could never afford honey, and now the idea of sweet tea makes me queasy. It just tastes better to me.”_

_“Well, hopefully it’ll help you get some sleep.”_

_“I doubt it.” He pauses, looks away from me, then back again sheepishly from the corner of his eye. “Can I stay awhile? I won’t bother you or anything. It’s just...too lonely in my room.”_

_“I don’t mind. I just need to finish some of this paperwork.”_

_He smiles and nods, and I go back to the plans on my desk. I’ve tried to keep my writing to a minimum, since I still haven’t gotten the hang of writing with my left hand, and it only makes the planning illegible, but I come across something that must be corrected and spend the better part of ten minutes trying to write something neat enough to read. The more I look, the more I find things that need to be corrected, but the writing is so tedious I know I’ll never get it done by myself._

_“Eren, could you--” I stop, because he’s slumped over the table, cheek squished up into his hand while he dozes. I can’t help but think he looks so innocent when he’s sleeping._

_I come to an impasse. I can’t just leave him sleeping at my table in an uncomfortable wooden chair, but there’s no way I could ever carry him back to his room, not with one arm. After much debate, I hoist him carefully over my shoulder and set him on my bed. The armchair by the fireplace will be just fine for me. I head to it, back to the bed, when I hear a soft voice._

_“Commander?”_

_I turn. “Did I wake you? I’m sorry.”_

_“Yes, but it’s okay.”A pause. “Do I have to go back to my room now?_

_“Well,” I hesitate. “No, you can stay. I was just going to sleep in the armchair.”_

_“You don’t have to. I don’t mind if you…” He clears his throat. “I mean, it is your bed.”_

_“Eren, I’m your commanding officer.” I say it, even though it’s obvious and it really means nothing. I need to reassure myself more than anything._

_“I’d feel better if…” he looks at me, seems to decide whatever came next isn’t worth saying, and rolls so that his back faces me. “Nevermind. Goodnight.”_

_I’m caught between my morals and some sort of desire to comfort him. It’s terrifying, this life, and Eren has gone through it practically an orphan, a soldier, and a monster. If there’s anyone who understands what it’s like to be those things, it’s me._

_I don’t know what compels me to do it, but I climb into the bed and keep my distance._

_“Eren… I know that this is hard, but just remember, you’re not alone. People will go to great lengths to remind you of that. I gave up an arm for it. We’re here for you. And if no one else is, I am.”_

_He doesn’t say anything, and I assume he’s fallen asleep again, but then he turns suddenly and pulls himself to me by wrapping his arms around my neck._

_“Eren!” I try to pull back, shocked, but his grip is too tight. I realize he’s shaking, and a muffled sob follows._

_It takes a moment for me to gather myself. I set my hand on his back and rub softly._

_“Please don’t cry.”_

_His reply comes in broken portions of a sob._

_“It’s… all my… fault.”_

_“No, no. Gods, no, Eren. If it’s anyone’s fault, it’s mine. I was so careless. Don’t feel guilty. It’s not your fault.” I want to say more, but I’m not sure if I can. When it comes to putting blame somewhere, I always save it for myself, and it’s been awhile since I let myself remember how much I am at fault for. Saying anything more on the subject is next to impossible, lest I cry as well._

_“Erwin…”_

_He’s still speaking into my shoulder, but skipping over my title is still shocking._

_“Do you think, if there had never been any titans that we could have… could have…” He sucks in a breath. “Been together?”_

_I want to pull him away from his shoulder, lock him out of my room. No. It shouldn’t be allowed. I shouldn’t even be given the opportunity to even consider such an idea. He’s half my age, my subordinate, and love between men is illegal._

_“Eren, that’s not--”_

_“But do you think?”_

_My jaw is slack, ajar, and the words die in my throat. He’s not asking for reality. Reality won’t give him peace enough to sleep._

_“In another lifetime, maybe.”_

>>>

The dreams are worse with him near me. They came with increasing frequency as soon as I saw Eren, as they had with Levi, so it was to be expected, but these are not the dreams of battles and expeditions, the recurring nightmare of losing my arm and waking up before I ever know if I’m not too late to save him--all the reassurance in the world that, yes, I did, does nothing. These are dreams that shouldn’t matter in the slightest, trivial things like thumbing through paperwork and making tea. They bother me the most.

I wonder, if, at least for this life, it would be better for my health to just stay away from Eren.

Whether or not it’s true, I couldn’t do it if I wanted to. I’d hurt him, or me, or both of us. It’s not like with Levi, where our past was the only thing that brought us together and our present--our future what drove us apart, mutually. Eren has no idea. And I have unsatisfied memories. As fake as this world can seem at times, being with Eren is a real continuation of the past.

Maybe it’s because I still have more years worth of memories for that world than this one that I sometimes question which is real, but I am reminded of where my corporeal body lies when I stumble out of Eren’s bed, down the hall and into his tiny kitchen where he’s relaxed in front of an old television, not unlike the frazzled little one hidden in the back room of the shop downstairs.

“Mornin’.” He looks at me. His hair is a mess, and he looks sleepy, but he smiles and pushes a bowl of dry cereal toward an empty seat at the table. He pours the milk as I sit down. “Wasn’t sure when you’d get up. Didn’t want it to get soggy.”

“Thank you.”

Seeing him is relaxing. He’s carefree and easygoing, even when he looks half asleep.

“‘S’it alright? I’m not much of a cook.”

“It’s great. I usually eat a light breakfast anyway.” I can’t help but notice how casual the conversation is, but maybe Eren’s still waking up, or he’s just not quite sure what to say after sleeping with someone for the first time.

“That’s good. You have to work today?”

“Not if I don’t want to. It’s Saturday.” I check my watch. “Aren’t you opening the shop?”

“I’ll do it in a bit. Nobody’s gonna die without their organic lettuce.”

We lapse into a small silence, where Eren watches the tv with a completely disinterested gaze and I watch his hands curl into fists in his lap and on the table, respectively.

“Something on your mind?” I set mine on the one on the table, and he reels back instinctively, clutching his hand to his chest like I’d burned him.

He looks at me, wild and animalistic for a second before he relaxes and his face falls. He keeps his hand to his chest. My stomach drops. Whatever this is, I feel like it’s my fault.

“Eren?”

“S-sorry.” He shakes himself and lets go of his hand, but not before looking at it for a long while. “Do you ever have dreams that just...get to you?”

My heart hammers. He doesn’t know. He doesn’t know. He doesn’t remember. He doesn’t know. No one tell him. He can’t know.

“Doesn’t everyone?”

He huffs a small laugh.

“Probably, but this was just… so weird.” He holds his hand in front of his face again. “It wasn’t even scary. I just dreamt that my hands were hurting, so I looked and them, like this--” he holds them to his face, palms up, then flips them over, “--and there were scars all over them. But, like, circular, like bite marks. And somehow I knew it was me that bit them, but I don’t know why. I can still… I can still feel them hurting.”

I try to hide how much I’m panicking. Some part of me, I realize, has been relying on the fact that Eren might never remember. That must be the part that’s still hoping we can have a normal life together.

“That is strange. Do you remember anything else?”

He shakes his head.

“No, just that.” He looks up at me. “What do you think it means?”

I keep breathing calmly.

“I think it means you need a day off.”

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There's a day off, the passage of time, and the blessing that he still hasn't remembered

I can’t pretend forever that he hasn’t started dreaming about it. I make a point not to let Eren get a good look at my face for too long while he goes downstairs to make a sign for the door. If he sees me, he’ll just know, he’ll know something is wrong and I don’t have an excuse for him, so I’ve sent him on an aimless mission to make a sign for the customers while I ‘get ready.’ He’s closing the shop for the day, as I’ve suggested.

I don’t actually have much to get ready, since I didn’t bring a change of clothes, and Eren’s would no doubt be too small, so I settle for a shower and put on what I’d worn yesterday. I’ll stop by my apartment for clothes later.

But the dream.

Somehow, I knew it would happen, and yet I couldn’t bring myself to believe it would. It had happened with Levi, for both of us. His would give him horrendous headaches, and both of us would relive battles we’d long since thought we’d won, over and over. But he remembered, all of it. He could give me names and dates and describe the acrid smell of titan blood and the feel of leather straps against the skin, the bruises they left. He looked at me and knew, looked and remembered.

Eren looks at me and sees a businessman whom he met for the first time a month or so ago. I’m not a commander anymore.

But if he remembers, then I will once again be the man who sends men to their deaths and only trades an arm for it. I will be the man who forced Eren into fighting a war we couldn’t win.

If he remembers, will he try to console me as he once did? Will he try, fruitlessly, to convince me that I am not to blame, when I hold the smoking gun? Or will he hate me for not telling him, for deceiving him and letting him think that our encounters were organic, that we weren’t already two old souls, too familiar with one another? And if he thinks that, what’s to stop him from telling me to get out of his life? Because now he has a choice.

Nothing. Not a chance rainy day or a cup of chamomile, or a ceiling fan spinning slowly in a dimly-lit room.

He wants to get lunch, so we do, and I drive us to a deli while he jabbers on the phone a little with someone whom he apparently wants me to meet, because he’s giving directions the whole time. He’s visibly brighter than in the morning, and it only makes me worry more. It proves that, were he to remember, he would look at this world with eyes that have seen as much evil as mine have. But he hasn’t grown into this world with his memories. They aren’t a part of him anymore. I worry that he might not be able to handle them coming back.

When his friend arrives, I wonder how they haven’t already.

It’s two friends, actually. Eren is facing the door and my half of the booth he picked is away from it, so I don’t see them until they come to our table, smiling. I can’t help myself.

“Armin?”

He’s tall and lanky, his hair tied loosely into a half-ponytail with the back half hanging down. The glasses on the bridge of his nose move a little as his eyebrows shoot up when he catches sight of me. The surprise stays there, but the terror flashes for only a moment before he hides it behind a smile.

“Erwin!”

He lets go of the little hand in his to give me a brusque hug when I stand, and Eren stands too.

“You know each other?”

I freeze, but Armin has never hesitated with a lie. He was being groomed for command before he died, I remember. Predictably, he’s a few years older than Eren, and I don’t let myself think about how Eren was after Armin’s premature death that accounted for the age gap between them.

“You remember that camp I was a counselor for? Erwin was one of my campers.” Armin laughs, and it’s so natural it’s eerie. “Bit young for you, ‘eh?”

Eren mumbles a ‘shut up’ at Armin while the blond nudges the little girl hidden at his hip forward.

“Been awhile since I saw you last.” Armin smiles and hefts the girl onto his hip. She can’t be more than six. “A lot has changed. This is my daughter, Mikasa.”

I must be over the shock of meeting people from my old life, because I manage to greet her amiably, and she just shies away into her father’s shoulder. At this point, I wouldn’t be surprised if Hanji were to waltz by to take our order. Armin sits in my half of the booth and Mikasa climbs into Eren’s lap and starts coloring on her menu quietly.

“Funny how we wound up meeting again like this, don’t you think?”

“I’ll say,” Eren laughs, but he has no idea what kind of weight Armin’s words carry. He’s so blissfully unaware of everything that he can’t even register the micro-expressions as they cross Armin’s face. He wouldn’t know what to make of them if he did.

Armin starts fabricating camp stories and I throw in a few of my own details for the sake of participating, but for the most part, I watch Mikasa. She’s completely disinterested in the conversation, and seemingly everything else around her as well. She doesn’t even speak to order food, she merely points to what she wants and goes back to coloring. I can’t tell if she remembers anything or not. If she does, her quietude is surely a result of horrific dreams and memories.

My opportunity comes when the waitress tells us to pay at the front, rather than pay from the table. I insist that Armin come with me as I go. There’s no line for the register, and the cashier’s eyes flicker up at us, but once we stop and it becomes apparent we aren’t going to pay yet, he loses interest. We talk in low, hushed tones.

“Commander.”

My stomach churns again to hear the title I left behind in death.

“Arlert.”

We talk in low voices, glancing across the deli as if the checker-patterned floor itself would betray us.

“You’re so young. This is strange.” He scans me quizzically.

“Everything here is strange. But age seems to be a direct result of when one died… there.”

“I figured that out some time ago, yes. Eren’s not much younger than me, but you, you’re, what, twenty-five?”

“Twenty-three. And Mikasa? Is she really your daughter?”

“Mikasa’s five.” He hesitates, looks at the floor and brings a hand to his face. I’m not going to say anything, because I know he has more to say, and he just needs a second to get to say it. He exhales shakily and gazes back toward the table where Eren is pointing out the things he likes in Mikasa’s drawings.

“You know, I didn’t think anything of it when I married Kiyoko. I was trying to leave a lot of things behind then, but as soon as she was born and her mother named her Mikasa, I knew I couldn’t run anymore. I don’t think she remembers anything, but it’s definitely her. She’s a happy child, really. I think that some things just carried over. Sometimes she comes to me in the middle of the night crying because uncle Eren has died. And I don’t know if she’s remembering the first time, or the second one I never saw.”

“Does she describe it?” I watch him.  His eyes are watering, just slightly, and he won’t look at me.

“She says he gets eaten by monsters, but I don’t think she knows what it means.”

“That… could be either time.”

Armin’s eyes lock on to mine in surprise, then his face falls. He sighs deeply and shakes his head.

“I’m sorry to hear that.” He’s apologizing to me, as if it were his fault, but also to offer his condolences for the six years I spent blaming myself for his death. “It was so easy, with him. We grew up together again and he had no idea of it all. Still the same rambunctious little kid, though.” His eyes flicker back to me. “You’re the first person I’ve met who remembers it all.”

“Not a day goes by where I wish I didn’t. I think all of us who remember feel the same. Levi said he woke up every morning and felt like he had blood on his hands.”

“The lance corporal’s here too? And he remembers?”

“All of it. More than me, sometimes. We couldn’t stay around each other. I think it makes the dreams worse.”

“The dreams are the worst part,” Armin muses, nodding in agreement. “Eren’s never had them.”

Something in my face betrays me and Armin looks first with alarm, then gives a heavy sigh.

“I’m sorry, it’s my fault. I shouldn’t have--”

Armin cuts me off with a hand. “It was bound to happen sooner or later. What was it?”

“His hands,” I say quietly. “He dreamt about the scars on his hands. That’s it. But it shook him so much.”

“He’ll know, soon. They’ll get more vivid.”

“Armin.” I can’t help how my voice wavers. I force myself to hold his gaze. “Do you think if I left him, the dreams would stop?”

Armin nearly sneers and I draw back.

“If you leave him now, he’ll miss you and that will only make it worse.” Armin crosses his arms. “Are you really that adamant that you be miserable every waking moment?”

I should’ve expected him to know, but it still catches me by surprised how easily he read me. I want to tell him he’s wrong, that I’m doing it for Eren because he has a much better chance at living a normal life if I’m not in it, if he never remembers, but I can’t lie to myself. If Eren remembers because of me, we’d never be able to live in this world together. And I’d rather suffer than impose memories of an apocalyptic world on him. If anyone has to give up their chance at a normal life, let it be me.

“I don’t deserve it,” I say finally.

Armin doesn’t say anything for a moment. He just glances at Eren, then gives me a long, hard look. He shuffles his feet and sighs.

“You can’t live like this. These worlds aren’t the same. If you keep living like they are, you’ll never be happy. This isn’t the place for you to punish yourself for things you may or may not have done wrong in the last world. If this were meant to be a punishment, we’d be in a lake of fire, not a city.”

I’m not buying it, and Armin knows it. He tries a different approach, hand on my shoulder and a hard look in his eyes.

“These bonds aren’t like normal bonds between normal people. Mikasa knows when Eren’s had a bad day; she doesn’t even need to see him. Eren nearly killed himself pulling a stranger out of traffic. You know who that stranger was? Mike Zacharias. Neither of them remembered a thing. It’s not coincidental, Erwin. It’s different for us because we remember, but for Eren, he has an incredibly deep bond with you he can’t even explain.”

I dig out my wallet and start to thumb through it, because I can’t look at Armin anymore. He’s right.

“If you make yourself miserable, you’ll make him miserable.”

Eren and Mikasa seem to have decided that we’re taking too long, because Mikasa comes running to us, dragging Eren by the hand behind her. I take the initiative and pay and out of the corner of my eye see Eren swing Mikasa up into the air and settle her on his shoulders. She laughs like crazy and grabs on to Eren’s head.

“Daddy!” She calls down to Armin, giggling and resisting Eren as he tries to pry her hands off his face. “Can we get ice cream? Please?”

“Ice cream?” He holds out his arms and she leans into them and allows herself to be taken down. “Why do you need ice cream?”

“Because…” She rolls her eyes toward the ceiling thoughtfully. “Because it’s yummy! And uncle Eren said so.”

“Did not!”

It’s simple, but it’s a representation of the things I don’t think can happen, happening in front of me. Two soldiers, completely isolated from their previous memories, living free, guiltless lives. I don’t know if I’m making things worse for myself later, playing along, but the words are out before I can stop them.

“I don’t know, Eren. Sure seems like something you’d say.” I take my card back from the cashier and throw an arm around Eren’s shoulders.

“Hey! Not you, too! Don’t sell me out!”

Mikasa only laughs harder.

“See? It’s his fault.”

“Tsk, tsk, Eren. Such a bad influence on my daughter.”

There, again. Mikasa had served to protect Armin, and nearly mothered both of them, yet there she was. Giggling in Armin’s arms while he tickles her and they gang up on Eren. He remembers everything, and yet he carries on. In this world, he is her father. He is the protector now. And he’s transcended the concept of playing a role.

It’s not that easy, for me. I can tell Armin has had years of practice putting the idea of dual lives behind him. He lives here and now, and his memories don’t line up with days of his past life. I can only wonder if it’s because I have far more of them to remember. I don’t think I’ll be able to do it like that, just force myself to live in one world--this world. If I do, I’ll forget which body is real again, get lost in the dreams.

Yet I know I won’t be stuck forever.

I can’t straddle two lifetimes like this for much longer, not with the way Eren looks at me, threatening to make me pay for all the ice cream if I don’t stop standing around and follow them out. I can’t do it. The guilt is so easy to give in to, to live for, but it’s not what I want. This is the life I desire.

I can only hope that my desire is stronger.

Work holds nothing for me. I tell the company I’ll be taking some time off for awhile, and it’s fine with them. My father’s old assistant has been itching to have my job since my mother moved up. Though with her there, she won’t hand it to him unless I ask for less to do. She keeps me there to keep him honest. If anything, they’ll shuffle me off into a lower level position with an inexplicably high pay. But that’s business.

I start out walking to Eren’s shop every morning, like I used to, but I don’t keep walking anymore. Instead, I go in and he makes me tea before the shop opens. I know it’s not coincidence that it’s always chamomile, but I’ve put it past me. It’s much more worthwhile to watch the way he always relaxes almost undetectably whenever he takes his first sip of the day, rather than think about all the reasons why he likes chamomile so much. We always drink our tea in silence. Most of the time, Eren’s not awake enough for words, but other than that, it’s just more comfortable that way. Sometimes I slip an arm around him while he drinks, but it’s our moment of quiet calm.

Then he flips his little sign on the door and the clamor of the world is let in and we can talk again. During the week, there’s a steady flow of customers, usually two or three in the store at all times, and on the weekends, it’s hectic, but manageable. Eren doesn’t ask me why I don’t go to work anymore, or even why I’ve started helping out with the shop without being asked. He doesn’t even mention it; only when we’re closing up and I prevent a box he tries to put on particularly high shelf from falling on his head, does he thank me and make some sort of pass at it.

“You know, it’s a lot easier with two people.” He dusts himself off habitually. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but business has actually picked up a bit. Mom built this shop so that it didn’t need too many people to keep it up, but one’s not enough. People are starting to notice that things are running more smoothly now.”

He laughs, and I kiss the laughter on his face as if to commit it to memory.

“Well, you looked like you needed the help. And there’s really nowhere else I’d rather go.”

“Even so. I owe a lot of the new revenue to you. I’ll split it.”

“Split it? Eren, I don’t want money. I have more money than I know what to do with. It’s yours, you should keep it.”

He frowns and glances at a few of the vegetables.

“At least take some of the produce. I can’t let you work for free. That’s like, child labor or slavery or something.”

“Hey.” I grab him with one arm and plant a kiss on the top of his head, more force than affection. “I’m six years younger than you, not six years old. And still taller! Call it volunteer work.”

“No,” he pouts, squirming so that he’s not stuck awkwardly under my arm. “Take the vegetables.”

“Who said I even like vegetables?”

“Erwin!” He socks me softly in the side, still pinned under my arm. “Take the damned vegetables.”

“Unacceptable. I will not.”

He sighs and slumps in my grip, then gives up and wraps his arms around me.

“Well I have to pay you somehow.”

“You are.”

He peeps up at me, one eye squinted.

“Sex isn’t your payment, dumbass. I do that because I want to.”

“No, no, it’s not that. It’s great, but, Eren…” I trail off because I’m not sure if I can say what I want to say. It’s far beyond my years, and it’d probably make him questions things more than necessary. He does me the courtesy of not interrupting while I gather my thoughts. “I don’t think you realize how empty my life was before you,” I say finally.

He draws back a little to look up at me, and I can’t describe the look on his face, something between sadness and affection, and for a moment I think he’s going to kiss me. His face cracks into a smile as he lets out a sarcastic scoff.

“What? You mean money doesn’t make you immeasurably happy? You mean there’s more to life than being really, really rich?” He feigns surprise. “I never knew! And to think I thought you were only after my vegetables!”

He breaks away from me, laughing, and shuts off the lights in the store, then holds the front door open for me, standing outside.

“Are you coming or what?”

He says, at the same time I ask him if he’s kicking me out.

“Where exactly are we going?” I follow him out the door and watch him lock it before he turns to me again, grinning.

“Well, isn’t it obvious? We’re going to your dreary, disappointing apartment to have a terrible time rolling around in money and having really miserable sex on your surely-uncomfortable, expensive bed.”

Of course, it’s not miserable. He was right in saying my apartment was dreary, but not while he’s in it. Dreary is the farthest word from my mind. He gives the place life. We crack open one of the expensive decorative wines, because he’s convinced they’ll taste like sadness, and he’s never drank wine worth more than his car before, and we finish the bottle. I let him do most of the drinking because when I drink I lose sight of the line between my world and the memories. Not that the wine is particularly strong, but I just need to keep thinking of it like that. My world. This is my world. Not that one. Here. Now.

He’s a beautiful enigma in my bed. There are no memories to parallel the sight of him there, because I never saw this side of him in that world. I never even let my imagination wander that far. Seeing him there, I’m glad I never did. He’s something to hold onto here, a reason to keep my mind in this world. I stare at him a little too long and he quirks an eyebrow at me until I come to my senses and climb into bed with him.

“Am I too pretty for you?” He’s teasing, but his smile is still soft and warm, and I give it a kiss to match.

“You don’t match the misery in here,” I say, stroking his cheek with a thumb. He tries to hold a grimace to feign misery, but can’t take himself seriously for long and he smiles. He smiles so wide.

I take him then, because I want to. Because this is the Eren I want, the one who can’t stop smiling and makes cracks at my affluence. Compared to him, the angry boy with a monster in his skin is just a bad dream. The one in my arms, panting and clutching at the sheets as I lose myself in him, he’s the real one. He’s real on my bed, his skin real under my fingertips, his body real and tight around me.

He’s so real to me that I don’t have to wonder if he’ll come back anymore when he leaves to clean himself up afterward. I know he will.

If I have any way to separate myself from the world I came from, it’s this, here, with him. I fall asleep thinking it’s possible.

>>>

_The night air is too cold for this time of year. Just outside of the breezy, abandoned tower we’ve holed up in, there’s snow on the ground already. The temperature just keeps dropping. Somewhere in one of the other rooms, the soldiers unfortunate enough to be associated with myself, Hanji, and Levi are huddled for warmth. They can’t light a fire. Even out here, in the middle of the ruins of the outermost wall, lighting a fire means being seen, and being seen means certain death. But it’s not the titans we’re afraid of._

_No doubt, there are some around our tower by now, probably clawing uselessly at the stones with hands that cannot grab enough to limb, numbers too thin and determination too weak to recreate what happened when the titans appeared within wall Rose when they tore down a tower to get to some of the members currently huddled for warmth in this tower. Though that’s not to say it won’t happen again. That’s why I’m by the window, watching to make sure it doesn’t because someone must, and what good is a commander with one arm if he cannot even keep watch?_

_Nonetheless, I’m more on the watch for tiny blurs of soldiers zipping through the buildings, across rooftops and through trees. They’re enemies now. With the exception of Pixis’s forces, who would never outright declare their loyalty to us, every trusted soldier is in this tower. My only solace lies in the fact that, were the soldiers to come, the titans would likely spot them first, and they simply don’t have the ability to deal with them or get this far like we do. If the cold doesn’t kill us first, we’ll be safe here._

_Still, I jump when I hear someone moving in the room with me. I sweep the lantern across the room and it reflects in a pair of strange green eyes and I relax. Just days ago, they’d appeared outside my door, before we were forced to abandon the plans that wouldn’t work and run before we were called in for trial. Trials in this government do not tend to end favorably, and the green-eyed boy in the lookout room has already survived one such trial, and isn’t likely to survive another. None of us are._

_“No sleep again, Eren?”_

_He shakes his head. Even with just the lantern I can tell he’s shivering._

_“You should go back to bed. You’ll freeze.”_

_“I’m fine. I don’t really get cold anymore.”_

_“You’re shivering.”_

_He doesn’t say anything more. He just walks across the room and joins me with his elbows on the windowsill. His arm brushes mine and I see what he means. As cold as it is, Eren’s skin is hot to the touch. It dawns on me that he’s not shivering because he’s cold, but nervous. Surely this has something to do with the strange things he’d said the other night when he crept into my room._

_“Why are you here?” Somewhere in being commander and never having to sugarcoat my speech for my subordinates, I’ve lost the ability to be civil. What should be just a question comes out as harsh as the bitter cold._

_“I didn’t want you to freeze out here by yourself.”_

_I try to tell him that I’m fine, but he wraps his arms around me and pins my arm to my side. I can’t deny how warm he is. I don’t want to say anything because I can’t. I’m freezing, but he’s warm, and even though everything moral and sound I have left is telling me not to let this happen, I can’t bring myself to push him away._

_“Eren,” I start, but the moment I do, he releases me, stepping away like he’s burned himself._

_“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he mumbles as he brushes himself off as if he were covered in dust. I forget what power I have and shut him up more quickly than intended by raising a hand. I can tell by the way he’s looking at me, he expects a lecture._

_“Thank you. I really do need the warmth.”_

_He looks at me, completely shocked, and I hold up my arm to invite him back, for the warmth if anything. He stands next to me stoically, but still I’m worlds warmer. He’s silent as the grave, not that the night needs any words yet I feel the need to speak anyhow._

_“Has anyone ever told you what really makes the difference between a soldier in the survey corps and any other kind of soldier?”_

_“Sir?”_

_“Soldiers in the survey corps know that life is finite. When you’re inside the walls and you’ve never seen a titan in your life, you can fool yourself into thinking you’ll live forever. Some men think they’re over it after they grow out of being teenagers, but they never quite lose the mentality of going to bed every night and thinking the next day is a given. You go out into the battlefield even once and knowing that you have to do it again is enough to snap you out of that mentality.”_

_Eren remains silent, gazing hard into the night as if there were more to it than shadows cast by moonlight. I continue._

_“Perhaps that’s why you’ll never see a soldier in our ranks married or in love. We can love, yes, but it’s not fair to anyone if we do. If we love civilians, they stay behind while we go outside the walls and drop like flies. If we love one another, we watch each other die in a mess of tangled limbs in a titan’s mouth. Though,” I pause, peering out into the night Eren is so fascinated with. “These days it seems we’re more likely to die at the blade of a military police soldier, or at the gallows rather than out here. It’s funny to think that we’re safer here than within Rose.”_

_“Have you ever been in love, commander?” His words cut the night, even though they are scarcely more than a whisper._

_“I have, long ago. I was about your age. But I gave up the idea of being in love and getting married to join the survey corps, and she married a soldier in the military police. Lives in the innermost wall now, I presume. A much better life than I could’ve given her.”_

_Eren doesn’t say anything more. He just stares out the window into infinity. It takes me a moment to notice how watery his eyes are. I don’t get the chance to ask him._

_“It’s not fair,” he croaks._

_I’ve had this conversation with many a soldier, but this time I can’t say anything, because for Eren, it really isn’t fair. Something possessed mere children to break through wall Maria and disturb the stagnant peace within. They killed Eren’s mother and forced him into the military in poverty, made him into a monster that kills other monsters. Gods know where they even are now, as much children as Eren--yet another thing that simply isn’t fair. Eren has every right to hate the military, survey corps included, and yet he fights on._

_“I know it’s not fair,” I say finally. “But maybe there’s some reward in it somewhere.”_

_“Not here,” Eren says bitterly, moving closer to me. “Not here.”_

>>>

I don’t know who wakes up first. I’m partially awake, only vaguely aware of my surroundings. As I come to full consciousness, I realize I should’ve been prepared for something like this, and fill with regret when I realize I’m not. Coming out of dreams is always more like coming up from underwater than waking up, and the way Eren shoots up, breathing heavy and clutching his chest I know he’s had one too. It takes me a second to decide whether or not to try to comfort him.

“Eren,” I say softly as if I’ve been awake this whole time and he’s only just waking up, completely fine. He looks at me with the same wild expression I saw from him in his kitchen after the first dream and I realize where I’ve seen it before, plastered on the face of a boy soldier as he bites down on his hand in rage. But this isn’t rage. This is yet another familiar look from that world. Fear.

It takes him a second for the expression to break. I don’t move, though I’m not sure if I can. When he moves, I move with him and he falls into me. He’s shaking again, and I wonder how strange this is to him, being older but tucked against me like a child.

“Bad dream?” I finally manage, and he nods against my chest. “Do you wanna talk about it?”

He says nothing at first, only pulling closer, and for once I’m glad he’s not the feverish temperature he was in my memory. He’s silent for so long I’m not sure if he heard me, and I’m about to repeat myself when he replies.

“It…” He trails off and shakes his head. “This is stupid. I’m freaking out over nightmares like some little kid.”

“Some dreams aren’t quite like others,” I murmur into his hair. I should let him let it go, but some part of me needs to know. For all I know, he’s just having a nightmare about taxes or something.

“It was my mother.”

“The cancer again?” It’s almost hopeful, but I don’t let on because it’s a strange thing to be hopeful about.

“She died, but not like that. I can’t even describe it. It was so vivid. There was this huge wall and…” He shakes his head. I clutch him tighter involuntarily. Maybe he thinks it’s comforting, but he can’t see the pain on my face. Right now, they’re just dreams, but they’re coming back to him. Who knows how long it will be before he realizes they aren’t just in his head.

“Something ate her. The wall broke and these monsters got in and something ate her.”

I take a moment to consider what a normal person would say in this situation. How would I react if I didn’t know exactly what he was talking about?

“It’s okay. It’s just a dream.” I settle for it, shushing him and stroking his hair, even though it’s a blatant lie. He doesn’t know that though, and even though I’m sure of how real it felt to him, he can still do something I can’t and tell himself that it really was just a dream and go back to chamomile and grocery stores.

“I’m sorry.” He pulls away and shakes his head, takes a deep breath and a small smile settles into his features. “It’s dumb. Thanks, though. I’ve been getting them a lot lately. Probably because I’ll have to file my taxes soon. It’s not so bad with you here.”

He sweeps in and kisses my forehead, which still feels strange to me, even though I’m technically younger than him.

“Come on, I’ll make breakfast!”

He charges out of the room before I can stop him. A set of confused shouts come from the living room and Eren runs back into my bedroom apologizing and holding his hands over his naked body.

“You have a maid?” He means to sound angry, but he’s blushing all the way to his ears. “I thought you hated all the rich person shit.”

“I do hate it,” I concede, trying to stifle a laugh. “But I need her. She’s not a maid. I do most of the cleaning myself, but I really can’t cook. She’s a chef. She only comes in on the weekends though, since I usually eat out when I work.”

Eren pulls on his boxers indignantly.

“You could’ve at least told me she was here.”

“Oh, I tried. You’re the one who ran out of the room butt-naked before I could say anything, though.”

Eren harrumphs and I get dressed too, smiling, because it’s senseless, normal-life bickering, but also pushing down the thoughts of Eren’s newfound duality. Minutes ago, when he was still shaken by the dream, he wouldn’t be lighthearted enough to laugh with me. I’m loathe to think he’ll never laugh again if he remembers.

My chef is gone by the time we make our way into the kitchen, though she left an apology for Eren on my notepad by the phone. He’s visibly brighter, again, though it seems the course after he’s had dreams, but still manages to look rejuvenated, despite being unshowered and in the same clothes he wore last night.

He meets my eye as we eat, then quickly looks away and goes back to his plate and for a moment I think the dream has crept back into his mind, but as he’s looking down, he’s smiling.

“Eren?” His smile is contagious, though it leaves me with a bit of confusion. He shakes his head, finishes his plate and looks at me for a long time. I cock my head at him and he smiles in waves, then stands next to me. I move to stand, but he pushes me back into the chair with a hand.

“No, stay there. I wanna be taller than you for a second.”

I think it’s lighthearted, so I sit patiently, humoring him.

“Okay, so this is gonna sound kinda crazy, but I just have to--I mean, it’s not like I’m getting any younger. I meant to do this last night but then you brought out the wine and I lost my nerve so I’m doing it now.”

“Eren wh--”

“Shush.”

I do.

“Okay, so I know it’s only been like four months, and I don’t mean to seem all creepy-boyfriend or anything, but I just feel really, really close to you, you know?” He waits for me to nod before continuing. “I wasn’t really sure where my life was headed until you bumped into me, and all I could think was ‘no way’ and then you kissed me and I didn’t really get it, and I still didn’t want to believe it but just...the point is, you’re a really amazing person, even if you’re crazy and you hate money and you always have to point out how much taller you are, I’m in love with you, and I want to spend the rest of my life with you.”

His speech has caught me so off-guard I don’t realize what’s happening until he sinks to one knee and pulls out a small box.

“Erwin Smith, will you marry me?”

And I can’t say anything. I can’t even breathe because I’m elated, I really am, but he’s right. This is crazy. He hardly knows me, and even though I have memories of him, he’s not the same person he was then, and I still don’t think any of this is possible. He’ll remember. He’ll change and he’ll hate me. I want to make a motion to shake my head, but I can’t even manage that. My eyes brim with tears and I’m not sure if it’s because I’m happy, or if it’s the lingering fear that being near me will hurt him.

“Erwin?” His shoulders fall a little.

“I…” I mean to apologize, but the words aren’t forming. “I don’t know what to say.”

“You could say yes…” He tries, with a hopeful half smile. I have to think fast. Breathe slow and think fast.

“Eren, I want to,” I say slowly. “But this is really sudden. I’m sorry. I just need some time to think.”

It’s all I can manage, and he gets back to his feet, nodding slowly and I get a glimpse of what it feels like to hurt him and hate it instantly. My head is still spinning, and at least part of me knows that Eren is only asking because the bond he’s describing is the one Armin mentioned, the bond that transcends lifetimes. I do the only thing I can think to do and pull him into a hug. I may lie to him every day for the rest of his life here, and I will if it keeps him from losing himself underneath the mass of his memories, but let it be known that what I tell him then is nothing but a solid truth, and always has been.

“You know you mean the world to me, Eren. You’re crazy and impulsive, but you mean the world to me. I love you, Eren Jaeger.”

And I hope he knows it’s true, that I mean it. Because if he does, he might just understand why there are so many lies.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> MOTHERFUCKING PLOT TWIST.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's only a matter of time before he remembers the boy with the lust for vengeance and the blood on his hands.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw for homophobic slurs
> 
> * * *

_We aren’t fugitives for long. We’ve run as far as we can, and yet they still manage to find us, but rather than an army, it’s just a messenger. They need us. There’s been another mysterious outbreak of titans within wall Rose--not a hole to be seen--and the garrison and MP can’t handle it. They need seasoned fighters, humanity’s hope, and humanity’s strongest. We’re promised amnesty if we comply. We can’t live outside the walls forever, nor can we live under the thumb of the king. But we can buy time._

_We go back, slay the titans and lose our men while the MP stands aside and watches, not lifting a finger. It takes days for the full cleanup, and the surrounding damage will be years worth of work, but we clear wall Rose of the threat and kill what were once brothers, mothers, uncles, sisters, sons, and lose our soldiers in the process._

_I find Eren in the depths of the library, staring numbly past a book in his lap. He’s grieving, as we all are, and I wonder where his sister is, the sight of them apart after such a loss a strange concept. He doesn’t notice me until I clear my throat._

_“Oh, Commander.” His voice cracks, even though his face is stony and his eyes dead. He makes a motion to stand and salute, but I put him at ease before he can forget about the book in his lap and knock it to the ground._

_“He was a good soldier. Excellent strategic skills. Maybe even the best I’ve ever seen. He was a good soldier. They were all good soldiers.”_

_He looks at me with his dead eyes, which can only focus for a moment before they fall and drift elsewhere. He won’t listen this way. He hurt the first time when the female titan obliterated his squad in the forest, but this is downright grief, in its purest form. Silent and dry-eyed, the kind of thing that makes a man into a marble statue._

_“Love is never fair for the survey corps. Remember that.”_

_When he looks at me, I see the facade dissolve and I remember that he really is just fifteen._

_“How can you live a life where you don’t love anyone? What kind of a life is that?!” He raises his voice and I can’t tell if he’s sad or angry. Probably both._

_“We can love. I do love people, Eren, but it’s better not to. Smarter. Love them, but love them less because you cannot love them more or you lose yourself, and then you lose your battles.”_

_“I’m never fighting again.”_

_It’s simple teenage rebellion, magnified by grief, but Eren is still a soldier, and there is no honor in cowardice._

_“And how long do you think the military police will let you live if you do that?”_

_Eren doesn’t say anything. He knows I’m right as much as I know harshness isn’t what he needs right now. He closes the book in his lap and sets in on the shelf._

_“I’m leaving.”_

_“Did I dismiss you?”_

_He stands to meet my eye and his hands ball into fists, but his eyes are still dead. I wait. If he hits me, I’ll say nothing. It’s too hard for a one-armed man to win a fight like this, especially when hurting the opponent runs the risk of turning him into a sixteen-meter monster. If he hits me, I’ll do nothing. I’m sure he needs to hit something. If anything, it would be a semblance of the Eren that seems trapped in this statue. His hands stay in fists, but they come up to a lazy salute instead._

_“May I be dismissed, sir?” There’s no life in his voice._

_I know, then, that no matter what I do, I won’t be able to unearth the fiery soldier everyone knows him as, and I grant him permission to leave._

_I don’t bother checking the title of the book he grabbed. There’s no need. It had something to do with Armin, for sure, but its title is irrelevant. I see what’s happening. Eren wasn’t reading the book and neither shall I. He is falling as only boy soldiers do. He’ll still fight, but he won’t be himself. He’ll be one of the boys who cares not if he lives or dies, only fights because fighting is the only thing he knows._

_I can’t stand to see him fall. Maybe he won’t, not completely, at least, but everyone slips just a little._

_I only wonder if the spirit in his eyes will return._

>>>

He looks surprised when he sees me at his shop the next day. Maybe it’s because he left under the presumption I didn’t want to marry him, and rather quickly at that, dismissing himself to go ‘tend to the shop,’ but what options did I have? I’m surprised that he’s surprised, but only for a split second. His surprise stays longer than mine, past when he lets me in and I kiss him like I always do, but on the forehead because he won’t tilt his face up to mine and when the surprise disappears, I see it. The shadows under his eyes, the paleness of his skin, and I know it’s my fault.

He makes two cups of chamomile, like he always does, but only finishes half of his before pouring it down the sink. Neither of us have said a word. I think he tries to give me a smile before he opens the store, but it flickers over his features without an effect.

This is what I’ve done to him. Beautiful Eren, living in this world like it was the only one he’s ever lived in. I’ve made him gray and shadowed.

It starts to rain outside, and no customers come. This isn’t the serene drizzle that fell the day I first kissed Eren here, but rather an unrelenting downpour. No one’s crazy enough to be out in it, no matter how much they need groceries. Eren sits behind the counter with an expression as dark as the sky outside and I lean against the counter helplessly, a world of space between us.

“Do you wanna go upstairs and make some breakfast?”

I can’t cook, but I’ll burn myself trying if it makes him smile again.

He just shakes his head.

I take the liberty of turning the little sign in the window to ‘closed’ and go behind the counter to Eren again, holding my hands out to him. He looks at them for awhile, then up at me, then back at my hands before he finally takes them and I pull him close.

“I love you,” I whisper, but I’m not sure why I do it. It feels artificial, like I’m compensating for something, even though I mean it.

His hands tighten around fistfuls of my shirt.

“I’ll marry you someday, I promise. Just not now.”

God, what a cruel thing to say. I don’t know if it slipped out, or if I meant it. He keeps his grip on my shirt but pulls back to look at me. He actually smiles this time, but his eyes are watering.

“I know.”

The way his voice sounds, cracked and bleary, hurts me.

He tucks his face into my collarbone again and I hold him close to me, tight, with one hand resting on the back of his head. I keep my arms tight around him because he’s never cried for me here, and because you can hug a lot tighter with two arms. Now I’m not even sure why he’s crying. He’s silent about it, the only telltale sign the warm wetness on my shirt.

“Hey, what’s wrong?”

He draws in a shaking breath and clings for a moment before relaxing. He pulls back to wipe at his eyes.

“It’s nothing.” His nose runs a little and he sniffs to keep it from running further. “I just… the dreams are getting worse.”

Dammit. God damn it. This is all my fault. They hadn’t come to him before I came back into his life and now they’re bad enough to make him cry, hours after he woke up. If I hadn’t… But no. I can’t leave him. Armin’s right, and if I leave, he’ll wake up alone every morning. Damn it.

I don’t know what happened to the solid man I was back then, inhuman and guiltless, as they said, but he’s nowhere to be found. Maybe he was just older, smarter, but, am I not him?

But I can’t be. He was a one-armed coward who didn’t want to love anyone because he was too afraid of losing them, or dying and leaving them. And it had happened anyway. I’m not him. To prove it to myself, I take Eren’s face very gently and kiss him.

“Maybe you should see someone about them.”

No one can help him anymore, but just maybe if he believes they can, he’ll smile again.

“No, no. It’s not that bad. It’s just kinda jarring, that’s all.”

“You know, I get them too.” I know I shouldn’t tell him, but I can’t help him unless I do. “Bad dreams that feel like reality. More than normal people, I think.”

“I doubt they’re anything like these, I mean…” He hesitates and looks at me, and for a second I see a flicker of life in his eyes again. Hope. “How do you deal with them?”

And I’m able to smile for him. I hum and twirl my fingers in his hair.

“Well, first I wake up and I look at the ceiling, then at the bedsheets, then my hands and my feet and I remember where I am. At home, in my bed. Here. Sometimes I have to look outside and see the city before I’m sure of it, or go outside and choke on smog first.”

He laughs a little.

“But I always remember where I am, and what’s real. Nightmares only last as long as you’re asleep.”

Memories, however, can stay in your head. I don’t tell him this. I’m in deep enough as it is.

“That’s true. I wish you’d just show up in my dreams and remind me it’s not real.”

“I can’t do that, but I’ll be here when you wake up.”

“Well, I guess that’s good enough.” A teasing tone sneaks into his voice and I know he’s better now.

We lapse into silence, but continue to hold on to one another. We stay there until Eren’s stomach growls and he lets go to offer to make breakfast this time, considering my cooking skills. I agree. There’s nothing left but to wait out the rain.

I can’t leave him anymore. I don’t know who needs who more. After another night at his apartment, Eren suggested I bring some clothes with me. I thought he’d be tired of me by now, but then again, he wanted to marry me. Wants to.

He slept like a rock. No dreams.

Maybe it was enough to somehow convince me that the dreams weren’t my fault, because I brought clothes and stayed another night with him. Then another, and another. Then more. I stayed nine days and he had one dream, only one. The feeling of flying, and leather straps against his skin. He couldn’t explain it, but he knew it was like the others.

I began to wonder if that’s how they would always be, just bits and pieces that didn’t add up. I just kept staying there with him, night after night, day after day. No one from my office called me, and no one questioned why I never slept at my apartment anymore. There was no one to ask.

It began to feel normal, like I’d finally found a place in this world, rather than shuffling along while straddling two. I opened the shop for Eren one morning when he wouldn’t get out of bed, and was almost amazed at how fluid everything was. The world moved around me as if I was really meant to be in it, this world. I recognized most of the regulars, but I’d never talked to any, until the morning when I worked for Eren.

“Just this.”

A gruffy businessman with an unlit cigarette dangling from his lips sets a few bananas on the counter. I’ve seen him before, usually eyeing the breads, of which he only bought whole wheat. He looks to be about sixty. He squints at the nametag Eren had made for me after I refused a share of the business and told him I was volunteering.

“Smith?” He wonders, out loud.

“... Yes,” I answer hesitantly, trying to remember if I knew him from somewhere other than here.

“The ‘Enterprise Petrol’ Smith?”

“Sorry, do I know you?” I’ve forgotten what I’m doing, a hand hovering over the register.

“Probably not. I work down in communications. But you, you’re the CEO’s kid. CFO on a break, if the rumors are true. Bet nobody thought to look for you here. They all thought you were on your own private island or something.” He sees the continued confusion on my face and adds, “Ain’t too many ‘Erwin’s around here.”

“Oh.” I remember what I’m doing and go back to charging him for the bananas. They’re less than a dollar, but he continues talking.

“Why here?” He seems to remember some formality and corrects himself again. “If you don’t mind me asking, uh, sir…”

“Just call me Erwin.” I’m not a ‘sir’. Commanders are sirs. I’m not a commander. “I just felt more at home here.”

“You’re in love with the kid, huh?”

The question takes me by surprise, but the man just laughs.

“‘Bout time he found someone. He’s been kinda lost since his mom died. Having lots of crazy dreams or something. It’ll be good for him to have somebody around. Rich businessman or not.”

He pays for his bananas and is about to grab them and leave before I latch on to what bothers me about what he said.

“He’s been having bad dreams since his mother died?”

The man looks momentarily confused, but replies anyway.

“Yeah, he mentioned it a few times, but never said anything about it. If he’s having nightmares, it’s pretty obvious why. If you’da met Carla, you’d understand. You can’t just lose a lady like that and walk away, especially if she’s your mom.”

“I’m sure she was wonderful.”

I thank him for the business and tell him to have a nice day, typical customer service embellishments, but what he said hit me like a freight train, and I don’t know if I should be happy or concerned.

Armin was wrong. Eren must’ve started remembering after his mother died, a mirror event between the two worlds, but he never told Armin about the dreams. Which also means that they weren’t my fault. Maybe I catalyze them, but he wasn’t as free of that world as I thought he was when I met him here.

He joins me in the shop later on, sleepy and smiling, and I wonder what his first dream was. He hasn’t had one in awhile, and that adds to the mystery of his dreams. Mine come every night, whether I remember them or not. Levi’s had been so bad that he’d taken to excessive sleeping pills to knock him out long enough to get a decent amount of rest. Armin hadn’t mentioned his much, but he gave me his number in case of any emergencies. Not that he needs to know about Eren’s dreams. But I might.

I’m still not even sure what he thinks about them. There’s still obviously a lot he’s not telling me, but if I ask him, he’ll ask me about mine. But I can’t keep putting it off for later, especially when it’s the biggest obstacle in our relationship and he doesn’t even know it exists.

“Finally up?” I kiss him as he makes his chamomile and can taste the toothpaste on his breath.

“Mhm.” He clings to me sleepily for a moment before going back to his tea. “Everything alright with the shop?”

“Everything went smoothly. You were only asleep for an hour or two while I ran it.”

Eren checks his watch and huffs a laugh when he realizes I’m right.

“How did you sleep? No dreams?”

He shakes his head and I’m relieved.

“Not that I remember.” His eyes roll up to the ceiling in thought, and for a second I’m reminded of the largeness of his eyes in his youth, and how the years I knew him there had scarcely aged him, but here there’s stubble on his chin, a solid shape to his jaw, and a certain wisdom to his eyes. No. He’s lived to see more years here.

I have to remember to keep this about him, and not let myself get caught up in it.

“You know, one of the regulars told me you started having them when your mom died. I was under the impression that this was a rather recent thing…” I trail off to let him confirm or deny.

“It is, and it isn’t. Those were worse when she died. None of them made any sense. I don’t even remember what happened in them anymore. I just used to wake up panicked. They mostly went away after a year or so. I’m not really sure why I’m having them now, but it’s not like they wouldn’t show up every now and then. They’re just so much more vivid now.”

One step forward, two steps back. I didn’t start them. But I trigger them.

I don’t realize he’s asked me a question until I see him looking at me expectantly.

“Sorry, what?”

“I asked you which customer told you about my dreams.”

“Uh. It was the older businessman. Didn’t catch his name, but apparently he works for my company. He recognized me.”

“Oh, Roger. Yeah, he knew my mom well. He’s been coming here for a long time. I think I remember asking him what I should do about the dreams, but he told me I just needed to grieve.”

“And they went away after that?”

“Well, not completely. Like I said, they’d show up every now and then.” He laughs to himself and finishes his tea. “At first I thought you were causing them, but they haven’t been so bad since you started staying here.”

“Oh.”

I can’t say anything else. I don’t know that I can without saying too much. I see him light up and bolt forward a fraction of an inch, then sober and recoil a little.

“Something the matter?”

“It’s nothing, I was just thinking.” He sets his mug in the sink and frees his hands, so I take one and kiss it.

“About what?”

He turns to me with his hand still near my mouth and I lift an eyebrow at him. He’s looking at me with an intensity I thought had disappeared forever when Armin died in the other world, but here it’s been carefully cultivated.

“Do you wanna move in with me? I know you said you weren’t ready to get married--” he says those  words heavily “--but you’re already here all the time anyway. Your apartment is bigger, but if you decide to go back to work, you’re closer.”

He stops himself, having lost his forward motion somewhere in the middle of his words. To tell the truth, I’ve been thinking about doing the same thing--asking him to move in--but I wasn’t sure how he’d react to me suggesting he leave his home right above the shop. It was solely for selfish reasons, of course. After so many nights with him, I’d been wondering how I’d ever return to my empty apartment.

“You know,” I set my hand on the top of his head for emphasis. “I don’t mind small. I’d love to move in with you.”

“Okay, nevermind, asshole.” He moves out from under my hand. “You’re not moving into my tiny apartment with me if you’re just gonna make short jokes the whole time.”

He’s genuinely angry about being shorter than me, but he’s still grinning. I try to grab him, but he dodges me and runs out of the back room and I don’t catch him until he’s behind the counter again, both of us out of breath and laughing.

“Nope,” I tell him. “It’s too late now. I’m moving in with you and I’m going to call you short every morning and make you feed me breakfast.”

“Never!”

He falls back in my arms dramatically and I kiss him. It takes us a second to remember that the shop’s still open and we have customers milling about (and a small captive audience) before we break apart, still grinning.

We plan how to move things in between customers. He’s getting rid of his bed for mine, he says, because he likes it better, and we’ll sell the wine collection and do this with that and that with this, and for the whole day, I forget about ever living in another world. There was only one world in that moment. This is my only world now.

I try to let myself think that, but I remember the other world in a dream that night, and reality tears me from it in the middle of the night, blurring the line between them. When I wake up then to the sound of shattering glass, I’m more the commander here than I’ve ever been before.

“Shit, what the hell?” Eren’s alert beside me, woken by the noise as well, and he starts to push the covers aside to go investigate, but my mind’s in overdrive and I stop him from moving with an arm.

“Stay put,” I order, getting out of bed myself.

“No.” He pulls on some pajama pants. “I’m gonna go--”

“Stay put!” Part of me almost adds ‘that’s an order’.

Even in the low lighting, I can see the momentary fear and lasting confusion, but I won’t process it until later. I’ve never been this rough with him.

“It came from downstairs.” He nods toward the door, and I feel myself giving him a solid look to keep him in place.

The blood’s pounding too hard in my ears to process Eren freeze under my gaze and reach for his cell phone instead.

I find a frying pan in Eren’s kitchen, which is about the only thing that constitutes a weapon in the whole apartment, and creep downstairs with eyes wide and muscles coiled. I hit the lights in the shop, but there’s nothing to be found. I can see all of the aisles from my place on the stairs, and double-check to see that the bathroom and storage doors are still locked. The door to the stairs locks from the inside, and I would’ve seen anyone trying to get to the apartment. I check the back room behind the counter to be sure that there aren’t any intruders. The place is empty, but the scattered shards of the front window appear to be the source of the noise. I set down the pan somewhere to investigate, the wind coming in from the broken window raising goosebumps on my skin. There are a few bricks among the shards, and I jump a mile when I hear someone behind me, but it’s only Eren.

“Christ, Eren, I almost decked you. You’re lucky I put the pan down.”

He just gazes at the shards dejectedly.

“I called the cops already. They’ll be here in a few minutes.” His voice is rather toneless, and he gets closer to the mess and I see his shoulders drop. I didn’t notice at first because I was on high-alert, and still caught in my dream but hastily written on each of the bricks in stark black marker is ‘faggot.’

I come back down, back to this world fully and set a hand on Eren’s shoulder.

“I’ll clean it up after the police take some photos.”

Eren just shakes his head.

“My mother painted that window.”

He’s gazing at the shards among the hate, and I can’t bear the look on his face so I pull him to me and he tucks his nose into my neck, not crying, just squeezing my shoulders and letting go occasionally. I’m still holding him when the police finally arrive. I let go of him when he goes to unlock the door, even though the window is gone, the door’s still locked. We talk with the police in quiet voices, and let them take pictures of the damage for the insurance. They glance at the writing on the bricks, then back at us with jaded eyes as if they hadn’t even needed to read it. One of them started asking for a statement to file in the complaint. Eren still looked rather weary, so I excused us for a moment.

“I’ll handle this. Why don’t you go sit down for a bit and we’ll go to my apartment when we’re done with the police.” I give his shoulder a squeeze and expect him to let me lead him to the little back room where he makes his tea, but he won’t budge. It takes a second to catch the hard look in his eyes, and I’m stunned by how little it’s changed, a decade older than I’ve ever seen it, and in a different world entirely.

“I don’t know what kind of macho streak you’re on, but this is my shop. I’ll handle the statement and the insurance. I know you’re worried about me, but I can handle myself. I’ve been running this place on my own since my mom died, and I don’t need you looking after me. Christ, you act like I’m helpless.”

“No, I just didn’t want you to--”

“I can handle myself, Erwin. I know you’ve got some sort of superiority complex from being like, four inches taller than me, but I deal with shit like this all the time. You’re just a kid, and you’ve been fed with a silver spoon your whole life. Just let me handle this. Why don’t _you_ go sit down?”

I stand stunned while he walks off to talk to the police, and I realize the one thing I haven’t distinguished from my memories. He’s right. He might have been a soldier then, but he was still just a kid, so I felt obligated to look after him. I woke up too quickly to draw the line between the worlds and I lost my bearings. But I’ve been doing this the whole time. I don’t know how to love him without trying to protect him.

I unfreeze long enough to grab a box from storage and pick up every shard with paint on it I can possibly find.

We go to my apartment after everything’s been dealt with because Eren’s just doesn’t feel safe anymore. It’s funny to think that a broken window makes me feel unsafe when before my concept of safety was anywhere without titans or the military police. But here, any grabbing happening through a window will be the hand of a thief, not a titan, and I moved a shelf in front of the broken window to make sure that wouldn’t happen.

He doesn’t say anything for the rest of the night. I don’t have any more to say to him. I’m too busy trying to sort myself out. I can’t live in this world like I did then. He’s not a child anymore. I can still care for him, but he doesn’t need me to. I need to love him as my equal. He’s not weak. He doesn’t need me to protect him.

He never has.

I know I won’t be able to go back to sleep so I just lay with him on my bed with an ear against his chest, listening to his heart beat. I feel like it’s what he needs. My instinctive reaction is to bring him close to me, guard him with my arms and keep _his_ head against _my_ chest. But he’s just had his security taken from him, and I’m not about to make him feel any weaker than he’s already feeling. And I want to hear his heart, even if I can’t fall asleep to it right now.

The thudding of it slows after a time, and I know he’s fallen asleep, but I’m far from it. I don’t really want to risk dropping myself back into the middle of that memory, especially when I woke up and it carried over. I just want to lay in my bed listening to his heart and watching the glow of my alarm clock in the dark, because there are no alarm clocks in those memories and it lets me know where I am.

I might be about to fall asleep, and I have no idea of the time when his heartbeat starts to pick up. I think he’s woken, so I lift my head, but his eyes are still shut. A muscle jumps near his mouth and he scowls in his sleep. He’s having a nightmare.

I feel helpless. I know better than to wake him from it, especially after being woken from one myself earlier. I read once that nightmares only last nine seconds, but the brain is processing things so quickly that it feels like hours. That doesn’t seem to be true for memories that replay in your sleep. He twitches and scowls and mutters things I can’t understand for so long the only thing I can think to do is lay my head against his chest again and wait for his heartbeat to slow back down to an even pace.

After what seems like eons, it’s still pounding, but his breathing has started to pick up, and his face is contorting into all sorts of tortured expressions, and I think long and hard about going against myself and waking him up. Maybe it won’t be the same for him. I know those are memories. He doesn’t. Maybe he’ll recover more quickly than if he remembers to the end of whatever he’s dreaming about if I wake him up. Or maybe it’ll just make it worse.

I can’t do anything. That’s my ultimate conclusion. I close my eyes and hold onto him. He’s still, but for his heart and his breathing, and the way his fingers twitch occasionally against my back. I wonder how long his heart can pound like this. I think he won’t wake up until it slows and the dream ends, but I’m wrong. He bolts up with enough force to throw me off of him, and I wonder how bad his dream was for it to wake him in the middle.

“Eren?”

I reach for him, trying to comfort him if I can, but I know he’s going to take a minute to remember who he is. He looks at me with eyes wild and his mouth goes slack for a second. I should have expected something like this, or better yet, just pretended I was asleep, but still his voice chills me to the core.

“Commander…?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SORRY NOT SORRY
> 
> 4 inches is 10cm yw rovy


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Resolution

My blood runs cold. This can’t be happening. I have to do something. Say something, ask him why he’s calling me that. Anything. But I can’t. The dream I was pulled out of is still resonating with me, but now it’s creating dissonance with the man I am in this world. Commander.

“Eren,” is all I manage, a weak and tiny voice. I try to urge myself to say more, but I can’t. He’s looking at me with wild eyes, looking me over and over, like I’m something he’s never seen before. Something he thought he’d only imagined.

I hear him choke on a sob and watch him slump over himself shaking and crying and I can finally do something right. I move my arms around him, bridging the gap between us, and just hold on. I shush him and rock him, in a way I know this Eren would hate because it babies him, but he’s not himself right now. I’m not smart enough to think that it might be resonant enough to perpetuate his nightmare.

“Shh, don’t cry.” Hands in his hair, rubbing his back and coddling him.

“I’m not… I… I don’t know why I’m…” He hiccups and can’t figure out what to say.

I continue to rock him as he calms down and I begin to think that it just might be alright. I hold him in silence while the sun starts throwing rays through the curtains over the window. I’m thinking it’s serene, everything’s fine, until he says it.

“You were there. You were in my dream.”

I react too harshly to play it off. I stiffen noticeably. I make the mistake of trying to play it off, trying to ease him of the subject rather than letting it drop.

“Oh. What happened?”

“I was…” His eyes roll toward the ceiling. “Captured or something. And you came after me and one of those monsters caught you. But you saved me.” I think he’s doing better, so I let go of him. He shudders slightly. “God, there was so much blood.”

I muse quietly, trying to generate words to create a natural flow, before I realize he’s staring at me wide-eyed and horrified.

“Are you okay?”

The second I move toward him, he jolts back.

“Why are you doing that?” His voice shakes. Dread pools in the pit of my stomach.

“Doing what?”

“That. With your hand and your arm.”

I’ve done it without realizing it, and it takes a second for me to process what he means. My left hand has curled itself around the opposite bicep, subconsciously holding the wound that isn’t there.

“I was just imagining it. It sounded painful.”

He shakes his head at me and backs away until he meets the headboard of the bed.

“I never said what happened. I never said it was your arm. Erwin,” he pauses and swallows. “How did you know that? How did you know it was right there, on that arm?”

I try to speak, but the sound dies as a gurgle in my throat. I have no excuse. There’s no possible way I could’ve known that. Even if he’d talked in his sleep, no one would’ve been specific enough to mention which arm or where. I was reacting to the mention of ghost pain. It had simply happened because he brought it up.

“Commander.” He speaks the word so softly it’s barely a whisper, but my eyes widen instantly and focus on him the second he says it.

He sees it. I’m too weak to hide my reactions. I’m losing the battle I’ve been fighting to keep him from remembering, and I just keep making it worse for myself. He sees my and my surprise and comes to his own conclusions. I know as soon as the horror settles into his face.

“How did you…?” The disbelief is there, but it’s dripping off and exposing the underlying reality. “God, these dreams… did they…” He looks me in the eye, solidly, and I know there will be no more lying to him. “Did they happen somewhere?”

The questions hangs in the air between us, filling the room and replacing the oxygen, because I can’t breathe. It’s choking me.

I open my mouth and try to shake my head, but the gesture is half formed and the horror on his face is dissolving into an angry hunger for the truth.

“Erwin. Tell me. Did these things happen? How do you know about my dream?” I hear the tone in his voice warning me to tell the truth.

When I shake my head again, it’s a whole hearted gesture with no answer to his questions.

“Don’t just shake your head at me! Did they happen or not?”

I can feel the burn of my eyes as they start to water, and I look up at him through glassy tears. The only thing I can say is his name.

“God dammit, tell me the truth! What the hell happened? Where is this coming from?”

“We never made it to the basement.”

The words should mean nothing to him, but all of the anger falls away from his face. His brow creases, and he reaches for a key around his neck that hasn’t been there as long as he’s been alive. I can’t stand to see it. I’ve done it. I’ve ruined his chance at living here without the guilt of a second life on his shoulders. He sits dumbstruck, still halfway in the blankets with a hand on his face. His lips barely move when he speaks.

“You knew.”

He defeats me. He knows. He’s speechless.

It’s been building on itself, this feeling of not knowing what to do. And now I have absolutely no solution. I don’t know what to do. I don’t think I can help him. I don’t think there’s even anything to help anymore. He’s just sitting there, staring at me and waiting for me to say something. But I don’t have anything to say.

“How long?”

How long have I known. He wants to know how long I’ve known he used to be a monster, how long I’ve been a ghost of the heartless commander. It’s his assessment of how genuine this encounter is. Whether or not I knew about it when I met him. He can’t know everything yet. It was one dream, the memory of being strapped to a traitor’s back, bound and gagged and unarmed until I nearly bled out cutting him free. He mustn’t know about the events that happened afterward. Armin’s death. The exile of the Survey Corps. His own death. All he knows now is that his dreams are real. He won’t have remembered what could’ve been before he died.

“Always,” I answer finally, staring hard at the floor.

I know what’s going to happen. He’ll hate me for not telling him, blame me for making him remember. It’s already started. He’s not saying a word.

I see him stand out of the corner of my eye and lift my head.

“Eren, please--” But I don’t know what I’m asking him to do.

He shakes his head at me, eyes still empty and not meeting mine. He pulls on his pants, shoes, then leaves. I hear the front door to my apartment shutting, not loud or violent, just closing like the chapter of a book. It’s my fault. I’ve done it.

I can’t say how long I stay there, trying to think of things I should’ve said or done. What if I’d been honest with him, actually told him what his dreams meant? But then, Armin knows him better than I ever have, in both lives, and he’d seemed so relieved that Eren didn’t know about any of it. He’d never seen a reason to tell him, so what right would I have had to do otherwise? What right did I have to come to him in this life and ruin things the way I did?

What have I done?

Somehow I find myself at work. There’s a valet ticket in my pocket, so I took my car, drove right past the shop without so much as a glance. My mother is glad to see me, fills me in on a few matters that need sorting out, and I get an armful of paperwork.

She’s not the same. This CEO woman is who she’s always been, but she’s not my mother, my first mother. The two women don’t even bear much resemblance. And with Mikasa, she’s Armin’s biological daughter, her first mother and father god-knows-where. It seems parents don’t matter quite as much the second time around.

But I can’t stop thinking about it. Any of it. My mother, Mikasa, my arm, the walls--Eren.

I’m a man stuck in the past.

Bits and pieces though, they still function here. The paperwork on my desk disappears, sorted, filed, and resolved. I take phone calls and approve budgets, sit on a board meeting about offering a 401k. I’m not that man. I’m not. If I have to tell myself a thousand times that I’m not the man in a green cape, the one missing an arm, I will.

I’m not him. He’s not me.

Something about the office pushes me forward. I feel selfish for how quickly it evaporates my worries. Aren’t there other things I should be worrying about? Something about a smashed window? Oh, no, that was just some issues with the stocks.

I have to keep moving forward.

It works, for a bit, but only until I decide to use the first floor bathroom on my way out, calling it an early day already.

“Mr. Smith?”

The voice is gruff and familiar, comes from behind me as I wash my hands. I turn. It’s the salary man, whatever his name was, from Eren’s shop, more clean-shaven, but less free than the last time I saw him.

“You’re here? Why are you--what happened to the window? Where’s Eren?”

Where indeed.

The name, though, snaps me back. I stop auto-piloting the body of a businessman. Where. I need to find out where. It doesn’t occur to me that I’ve been rude until later, but I storm out of the bathroom until I’m in my car, skipping the valet and going straight to the parking garage myself.

Against my ear, the phone rings and rings, but there’s no answer. I try again. Four times, then scroll through my contacts where what I need sits a few places down from the top of the list. I hold my breath as it rings.

“Hello?”

“It’s Erwin.”

“Oh.” There’s a pause in which the sound of people bustling around in the background can be heard. “I’m so sorry, Erwin.”

“Is he safe?”

“He’s safe. He showed up this morning. Kiyoko took the day off for him. He’s with her and Mikasa of course.”

I breathe a sigh of relief. Just where I thought he’d be. He couldn’t go to his apartment, not yet. Who knows how long the window repair will take, and I doubt he’d be okay with running the shop. Maybe not for awhile, but I try not to let that get to me.

“How is he?” My voice is small.

“He’s...he asked me not to involve you. I don’t think he’s particularly happy with me either, but he said he couldn’t see you.”

“Couldn’t…”

“I have to go, Erwin. I’m prepping for a surgery. I’m not going to be able to get to my phone for a few hours, and the nurses are already waiting for me. I have to change my scrubs and leave my phone, okay?” There’s a bit of rustling from the line. “You’re going to be alright. Just give him time. He’ll decide when he’s ready, but he’s got too much to deal with right now. I have to go.”

Armin says goodbye and the line clicks dead.

He can’t see me. He knows I’ve caused it, and now he’s holed up with the reincarnations of his best friend and adopted sister because it’s the only safe place he has left. There’s nowhere for me to go either, because nothing feels like home here without him.

I go back to my apartment anyway, forgoing the idea of dinner for a drink strong enough to put me out for awhile.

>>>

_Washed up. That’s what’s said about old, useless soldiers (see: commanders as well) who can’t fight anymore, and tell me it’s not true. But this is life. You die outside the walls, which is what I expected to become of me, or you get injured, get old and useless, and fatten up on tax money. Except I’ve lost weight (probably has something to do with losing an arm though). Either way, I refuse to be washed up. I cannot ask men to ride out to risk their lives if I’m not risking mine. That’s the downfall of politicians, and why they get so little sympathy from the military._

_One-armed or not, I prepare for the fight. Not for myself, however; it’s much too hard to put a saddle on a horse or even put on the godforsaken straps of the maneuver gear with only one hand left (haha, ‘left.’) It wouldn’t be much of a problem, but for who’s been allowed to prepare me. I should think he was far more important than this._

_I watch him move, rather helpless myself, and try to be as useful as I can, but I’m not sure I’m of any help. Still too proud, I’ve pulled on the gear as best as I can, but I simply can’t manage the buckles and the straps are twisted uncomfortably in several places. He clicks his tongue at me when he discovers the knot I’ve made of the straps that cross in the back, just below the belt. No one would really see them, what with the beltskirt, but if they’re twisted, they’re loose, and if they’re loose, they’re unsafe. I note quietly how nimble his fingers are as he undoes my mess, careful to pull the straps away from my body so as to keep a chaste hand._

_I decide it would be awkward to watch him with the buckles at the thighs and focus my gaze on my remaining hand, examining the nails with unnecessary thoroughness. They’re dirty, and entirely too long, since washing and trimming (and just about everything else) is much harder to do with one hand, and I make a mental note to put my hand somewhere Levi will see it and clean up for me in an angry frenzy. For once, I’m glad that he cleans so much. Having a little help is nice. Still, I don’t need a squire._

_“Thank you, Eren, that’s all I need.”_

_He’s finished with the chest buckle and made sure everything is snug and in place and I almost feel whole again to be in the taut confines of the gear once more. He gives me a look that tells me, no, he’s not finished, and he circles me, hand on chin, surveying the gear like a concerned mother hen._

_“Eren, really, it’s fine.”_

_I wonder briefly if he still feels obligated to listen to a one-armed commander. I’m almost annoyed with how attentive he’s being._

_“Go join your squad, soldier. That’s an order.” My voice doesn’t seem to have the authority it used to, because Eren stops circling and stands in front of me, brow drawn and arms crossed._

_“Commander, I have to make sure you’re ready for battle. Lance-Corporal Levi said he doesn’t even want you fighting, but since you insisted, I have to make sure nothing goes wrong.”_

_“Eren, I’ve been going outside the wall since before you were born, and I’m tired of playing diplomat. Aside from that, shouldn’t you be getting ready yourself? I can give all the orders I want, but we’re not going to win this fight without you.”_

_I’m not sure what I’m telling him to go do, since he’s already in his gear, and the metal sheaths that hook onto his hips are lying in the corner of the room next to mine, and any horse he might need is no doubt already prepared for him, but something in me hates being doted on like I’m useless._

_“If anything goes wrong,” he says carefully, “it’s my fault.”_

_I open my mouth to retort, to give him another order, but then I catch him looking at the empty sleeve pinned back so that it won’t get caught on anything and I feel realization dawn on me. The expression on his face is hard and guarded, but there’s no denying what it is: guilt._

_“Eren…” I place my hand on his shoulder and watch his eyebrows crease deeper. “It wasn’t your fault. None of it was. Every time I go outside the walls, I’m prepared to make much bigger sacrifices.”_

_“Don’t try to tell me it’s not my fault,” he snaps. “If I hadn’t lost the fight to Rei--to the Armored Titan, then they wouldn’t have taken me and I wouldn’t have needed a rescue party in the first place. I failed once, and it’s not going to happen again.”_

_“Eren,” I start, and try to give his shoulder a squeeze, but he yanks away from me and sets about setting up the sheaths and gas chambers. I doubt I’ll even need them, considering how limited my success with the actual maneuvering was, but the weight is welcome and familiar, and if anything, we could always use someone to cut ankles._

_“That wasn’t a fair fight, you know,” I say quietly. “He had his armor, and then it was two against one and you would’ve won if the Colossal Titan hadn’t stepped in.”_

_“It doesn’t fucking matter.”_

_He’s still fussing around with the metal conduits of the gas chambers, not looking at me, but he doesn’t have to look at me for me to be able to tell that my words have had no effect on him._

_“Eren.”_

_He grunts._

_“Eren.”_

_Silence._

_“Eren, look at me.”_

_He hesitates for a moment, then looks up at me, standing from crouching where he’s been trying to quadruple check the gas connections._

_“None of this was your fault. None of it.” I say the words slowly and set my hand on his head. “Soldiers die, and they lose limbs. But they know their risk, and they acknowledge it every time they salute and offer their hearts to mankind. You absolutely cannot blame yourself when it happens. It’s a fact of war, so don’t you dare take it out on yourself. If you want to take it out on something, make it the titans. You need to go out there and fight your hardest.”_

_He nods tersely, but I see his jaw clench and his eyes water, despite how he still looks angry. I don’t bother waiting for a cue. I just grab him and give him the tightest hug I can muster with one arm, glad he hasn’t gotten his gas chambers on yet. He stands stiffly, no doubt examining the strangeness of a hug from a commanding officer, but after a moment his arms come up and his hands catch on my jacket. I wait quietly while he shakes and sobs and remember that he really is still just a boy. I can’t hold him and rub his back or pat his head like I might if I still had both arms, so I settle for resting my head on top of his, giving him a squeeze whenever he sobs particularly hard._

_I’m not sure how long we stay there. Five, maybe ten minutes. After time, he pulls away sniffing at his running nose and apologizes for my shirt, not that it matters to me. Changing would be too much of a hassle now._

_“Better?” I ask, and he nods, then withdraws a little._

_“Commander, I…”_

_He says it so quietly I lean in to hear him, thinking he’s going to continue speaking, but instead he does something strange. His arms come up, a hand on either side of my face, and he sweeps into the space between us, our mouths meeting. At first, there is only shock. No motion, no fire, just pressure and shock. Even if my eyes weren’t wide from it, I’d be able to tell how scrunched up his face is, like I was about to punch him or something. I see his face relax and am surprised to find myself relax too, taking a long inhale and shutting my eyes. When he moves, I move with him, and I pull a centimeter away after some time has passed and the lapse feels natural, just enough to whisper._

_“Eren…” Even as I speak, my lips brush his and he, suddenly brought to life, jolts away, hand over his mouth._

_“I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” He nearly trips over himself grabbing his sheaths on the way out the door._

_He’s gone before I can protest, before I can stop him._

_I don’t see him anywhere before we leave the safety of the walls, and I wonder quietly if he’s run off because of me. We’ll lose if he has._

_But he’s a faithful soldier, and I see the crack of lightning that descends as he transforms and grit my teeth, promising to mend things later; fight first. We have a mission in mind, and with the sightings of the Armored Titan here, we’re more likely to win in titan territory where the Colossal is too slow to avoid the titans that would otherwise attack him._

__

_I get caught up in making sure the formations are right. I’m grateful that I can still successfully ride a horse with one arm, since it allows me to continue to make sure the formations are on track, and with the smoke signals alerting us of titans, I’m confident that we can reach the place where the traitors are. Eren is somewhere ahead of me, and Levi and Mikasa with him for protection, so I feel better about him. If anyone’s at risk, it’s me. At least I prefer it this way._

_I don’t even realize that we’ve run into a pocket of titans until it’s too late and they’re right on top of us. I see in the distance the shape of the Armored Titan, and Eren shaking the ground with each heavy step as he runs after it, but there’s a puff of smoke and Eren is left standing in it, swatting at the air dazed and confused. He doesn’t find the soldier commanding the titan body, already vanished in his cloud cover, and a stone drops in my stomach as I realize what this is. An ambush. They can’t have Eren on their side, so they’ve resolved to kill him instead, get him out of the way._

_Driven by some mad force, I abandon my position and turn my horse toward, him yelling. I’m careless, and anything as small as a three-meter class could do me in if it wanted to, but all of the titans seem to have abandoned their occupations to run straight at Eren, but they’re faster than me. From my vantage point, I seem to be the only one who knows what’s about to happen. As I charge, I see him turn, finally seeing the incoming wave of titans, and he roars in rage. At first he does nothing, and I think that he must be trying to control them again, but it has no effect and he roars again, this time more desperate._

_I can see Levi and Mikasa, twin spiral blurs as they cut down everything they can, Mikasa the slower protege of Levi, and for a second I am relieved because Eren will be safe. Between the three of them, the titans don’t stand a chance. Levi is too calculated to let anything slip through, and Mikasa too passionate._

_Too passionate._

_That must be her downfall, because a hand swats her out of the sky and I see soldiers rushing in to help her. She’s far from dead, I’m sure of it, but it’s distracted Levi and left him with twice as many titans to take care of. I was stupid to stop. I should’ve kept my horse going, because maybe I could’ve made it there in time to do something, even if it was only to distract a single titan for a single minute to buy them some time. But I can’t trade my arms for miracles anymore, and I see Levi moving as best he can, a cold killer, but it’s not enough. There’s simply too many, and every time another soldier tries, they gain the attention of a titan and put their life at risk. My head pounds. Losing. We’re going to lose._

_I snarl and rear my horse, charging again, but something goes wrong. The damned animal slips or trips over a rock or something and I wonder how such a beast could be so graceless at a time like this. I go down, pitched off my horse by the momentum, and the ground comes for me, but not before I see Eren go down in a mass of titans. Black comes when I strike my head on the ground._

__

_I awake with a pounding head, and my right shoulder aches as though it’s been popped out of place, even though there’s no arm to provide the leverage for that. I must’ve landed on it. First there is the ache, where I assess how much pain I’m in and wonder when it will stop. Then there’s alarm. I’m not outside the walls anymore, the horse, the soldiers, the titans--gone. And I am safe. I sit up so fast my head throbs and I yowl when my vision goes white from the pain. Footsteps alert me of someone coming near._

_My vision clears enough to see Levi shuffling in with his arm in a sling, his head bandaged. When our eyes meet, we say nothing. Nothing has to be said. A low growl rumbles up from my throat._

_“They ambushed us,” I snarl through gritted teeth. My head swims again and I sway, and Levi’s there to prop pillows up behind me._

_“The bastards,” he spits._

_I take a deep breath and let the anger clear. As my grandmother used to say, nothing’s worse for a weak body than anger._

_“Did we get everyone out safely?”_

_“Erwin, you know that’s impossible. Even on expedition missions we don’t--”_

_“You know what I mean.”_

_The look on Levi’s face is puzzled, but only for a moment. He knows only after I make him think about it. He’s always been my first priority, the most valuable on the field, so after missions I looked for him first, but it’s been years and I’ve since stopped thinking it’s even possible for him to die. I don’t have to look for him after missions because he can take care of himself. I don’t know when my priorities shifted, but he seems to know. Maybe it was right around the time I lost my arm._

_“There were some casualties.”_

_“There always are.” I look at him expectantly, waiting for him to elaborate._

_“I’ve always hated that word. Casualties. You can’t put ‘casual’ in a word like that. They should call them severities. Severe is more fitting.”_

_“I agree with you Levi, but you’re stalling. Just tell me.” The last three words are terse, but I force them out anyway._

_He hesitates, looking at me, and sets his good hand on my knee. Consolation. Already my heart has dropped to my stomach._

_“Things have turned up for us recently, but everything’s bound to go to shit now.”_

_“Who. Died.” I have no more patience than I have ease._

_“He went down in the middle of all of them. I couldn’t get to him. Broke my fucking arm trying.” He sighs, and the twist of my stomach means nothing. I’m not letting it. “The girl--” surely he means Mikasa “--got smacked out of the air--” I’d seen that happen “--knocked her head on something and was out cold. Lucky Kirschstein got to her or she’d be dead. But maybe if I’d had her to watch my back, I could’ve…”_

_“So he’s dead then? Humanity’s Hope?” I try not to choke on the last word, but it sticks in my throat anyway._

_“There’s still a possibility. We had to wait for them to clear, and we’re checking to see if he somehow got out of the titan since he had his gear, but things aren’t looking good.”_

_“I see.”_

_My eyes fall shut heavily and they burn slightly. Was I wrong to discredit him for his age? I hadn’t been surprised when he kissed me, not really. He was always so… fidgety around me, and I’m not going to pretend I didn’t see the signs. I thought it was possible to keep him distant from me, but then he was captured and just--_

_The fear. The crippling fear._

_I thought he was a dead man once, and I got careless enough to lose an arm when I realized he wasn’t. I know what it was. Elation. I was so incredibly relieved that he was alive that I couldn’t see a goddamned titan coming to munch on my arm and even then I still summoned the strength to cut him free._

_“I’ll let you be.”_

_Levi walks off silently, and I remember for a moment how stealthy he is. He wanted me to hear his footsteps earlier. He wanted me at least partially awake before delivering the bad news._

_I start to shake as soon as I hear the door click shut. I push myself back against the pillows. I want to scream, but I am numb. It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have let him go. I should’ve seen it coming, like the goddamned titans would actually let us take them, just like that. I should’ve called for a retreat--god dammit, why didn’t I call for a retreat? I should’ve rode in and saved him, cut him from the titan myself. I should’ve stopped him from leaving earlier, so I could tell him._

_It starts small, just a bubble that passes through my lips._

_“No.” Then again, louder. “No.” And louder still, a crescendo, each word a knife in the gut. “No. No! No, no, no, no, no!”_

_I bite my hand and try to keep it in when I feel the need to scream again, bite down until I draw blood, but that just makes it worse. I can see the crescent-shaped mark bleeding over my hand, one that would’ve matched the scars on his just perfectly._

_“Why?! God dammit, why does this have to happen?!”_

_I can’t help shouting, slamming my head back against the headboard. The door handle twitches, and for a second I think I’ll have to compose myself, wishing I’d locked the door, but I can’t do either. There’s murmuring outside of the door and the handle stops moving. Good riddance._

_I shut my eyes and squeeze them until I see colors, flashing lights. I can’t even look at my goddamned door without thinking about Eren clasping his hand over his mouth as he runs out._

_Eren._

_He’s dead now._

_The thought had been there all along, but it hit me like getting kicked in the stomach by a horse. But also like getting kicked in the head and the heart at the same time. I feel my chest tighten._

_I should’ve told him. I hardly ever got the opportunity, but I should’ve told him, and--god! his lips! I hate myself. I hate myself, I hate myself. I should’ve told him! Then, maybe I could’ve felt his lips on mine more than once._

_A sob racks my body, out of the blue, and suddenly I can’t stop. My head aches, and my shoulder still burns from being thrown out of place, but it can’t burn as much as my eyes or my face as the tears roll down. There’s no pain that can compare to this._

_I take several short, labored breaths between sobs. I am a soldier. More than that, a commander, and I have lost men before._

_But god dammit. I was such an idiot for thinking we could somehow run from all of this and have a chance. Now we won’t even get to try._

_I’m only making this worse. I should stop thinking about it, about everything and it’ll just go away._

_But I can’t. I can’t stop thinking about his little, hands, the way his eyes shone in the light, or whenever he was angry, the way his hair smelled when I set my face on it to hug him. I can’t stop thinking about the starchy stiffness of my shirt where he cried into it. Someone took me out of my gear long ago, but I’m still wearing the shirt. I touch the spot on my shirt and sob so hard it comes back as a hiccup._

_I have to stop myself, before I get to hysterics. There are so many tears I can’t see straight, and my hands are shaking so much I can hardly open the drawer to my side-table, but I do. I down three or four pills dry and try to steady myself before they do their job and knock me out._

__

_I think I wake up a day later. The search party has returned. Levi delivers the verdict wordlessly, and leaves me again. It’s as I expected. Maybe I cried them all out, because there are no tears. Just an empty ache. Someone comes by with food, but I force them out, entirely too forcefully. I’m glad they take the food with them._

_I’ve collapsed back onto my pillows, thinking that someone has rightfully shut all of the curtains so that it is dark and cold in my room and I think it is only right._

_I don’t want to think about what they’re saying about me. The commander, who was so strong--so strong and heartless that he’d sacrifice all of his soldiers for his stupid cause. And yet he has fallen, fallen into himself like a collapsing building because a single soldier has fallen in the field._

_But he was our hope. He was my hope. Dammit._

_I stare emptily into the ceiling. I’m thirsty, but I have no desire to quench my thirst. I think that, just maybe, if I close my eyes I can sleep forever. I do, but I’m so thirsty. So damned thirsty. My hand swipes across the table blindly, feeling for a glass of water, but they come across something else instead. I have to hold it up to my face to see what it is and I nearly hurl when I identify it._

_Hanging between my fingers is an old, brass key on a cord. I’ve held it before, in front of a boy in a dungeon._

_No._

_The tears I thought were gone come back to me and I squeeze. Squeeze my eyes shut, squeeze my hand over my mouth, squeeze the key in it so hard it bites into my palm and the force of squeezing opens the wound I made with my teeth._

_I shake and sob again, but I must not do this. I have to get back up. Commanders can’t fall like this. I roll so that I can get out of bed, but nothing happens the way it should. My feet collapse under me and my hand shoots out, landing in a closed fist on the ground. My right side topples, unbalanced without a hand to catch it, and I hit my sore shoulder again, the side of my face too. On the ground, the tears stream across my face onto the cold stone, tears going over the bridge of my nose._

_Stupid. I was stupid to think anything would go right in this world._

_I’m glad it’s Levi who finds me, opening the door and letting in light with crossed arms. If it were anyone else, they wouldn’t understand._

_“Get up,” he urges, softly, helping me to my feet when he’s gotten over seeing me on the ground._

_He forces my hand open when I won’t move without making a fist and looks genuinely surprised._

_“I thought it was lost…” He’s breathless. His eyes shoot to me. “Erwin.” He shakes me when I don’t respond. “Erwin, you big blubbering baby, do you realize what this means?”_

_I want him gone. He should leave me alone. He’s gotten me back up, and at least into a chair, but he should leave. Let me die here. He catches the look on my face and his excitement turns to anger._

_“You can stop crying now, you old lug. This means he didn’t die for nothing. We can still end this. We have the key.” His level voice isn’t calming._

_“Is that all he was to you? A key?!”_

_He doesn’t hesitate to deliver a sharp smack to my face, the crack of it stinging and diverting my attention for a moment._

_“He was a good man. My subordinate as well as yours, and I’m not going to pretend I didn’t know what was going on, but that’s this fucking world. But we have a chance, Erwin! If we don’t use this shitty key, the brat will have died in vain. I’ll give you more time, but you have to eat something.”_

_He starts to the door and turns around._

_“And take a fucking bath.”_

_He’s left me the key. I can’t believe he just left it with me, just like that. I hold on to it delicately, because now it’s precious to me. His life is in this key. Everything he was fighting for is here._

_Yes._

_If we can just, get there, find what’s in the basement, he can still save everyone._

_There’s still hope._

>>>

The dream riles me, but there’s nothing I can do about it. To think that I died there with hope, six years after he died.

We never did reach the basement.

Not that I know of. Maybe if Mikasa remembers, she can tell a different story. But that’s not something I’ll do twice, make someone remember a life like that.

A month passes. I develop a bad habit, a nervous tick where I chew the inside of my cheeks until they bleed. I try to occupy myself with work, almost overloading myself completely. I live only on my calls to Armin. After a week, he says, Eren goes back to his shop, fixes the window, opens it again. He’s still struggling. He needs more time. Give him more time.

I take the subway so I don’t have to pass his shop.

Two months pass. Part of me gives up on the idea of Eren ever coming back, and I’m tempted to call him but I know he won’t answer. More time, Armin says. He’s just remembered everything. Every morning when I wake up from the dreams, I find myself reaching across the bed for a source of warmth that isn’t there. One kiss. That’s all I ever get from him in the dreams. One, before he’s gone from them.

By the end of the third month, I’m determined to be the body I am here. I’ve set my determination on this a thousand times before, but then I had choices and now I don’t. I can move on and become who I am here, or I can stay caught in the dreams and let it kill me because I know that Eren has them too, but he hasn’t had years to come to terms with them.

Maybe I can even move on.

I tell my secretary over lunch, not that it makes a difference. She starts thinking of men she knows whom I could take out for drinks--’who’s going to say no to a CFO?’--and I start thinking maybe it’s not such a bad idea after all. I trust her enough.

There’s this one from finances, that one from human resources, and oh--the intern at foreign relations is pretty close to my age, so she says.

Maybe I can.

Three months is the time it takes me to situate myself in this second skin. The dreams slow down to a trickle. If they come at all, it’s seldom, and they’re lighthearted. Things I remember from my childhood before my father died. Sometimes I even mistake them for memories of this life. But I learn who I am here, and I can distinguish between the worlds.

It’s enough. It’s not much, but it’s enough. I can get up in the morning and check my schedule, maybe looking for gaps in which I might find the time to make it over to finances or human resources, or even foreign relations. I can’t bring myself to do it yet, but every morning I look for those spaces.

Armin’s calls stop coming. I figure it’s too much for me to annoy him with calls. He has a wife and a daughter, and a demanding job. He doesn’t need the extra stress of looking after two grown men. It’s time for me to follow in his footsteps anyway, though I doubt I’ll end up fathering any old friends of mine.

I’m peeking at gaps in my schedule again, and there’s a lot of them since it’s Saturday and I’m up early, when there’s a knock at the door. It must be Lena, forgetting her key again. I’m not exactly in the mood for breakfast, but something about her cooking always changes my mind so I go to let her in.

“Do I have to hide a spare key for you?” I’m halfway to a laugh as I open the door.

A smile hints at his lips. He stands there, just stands there in the doorway looking like he’s come to apologize for hitting my mailbox or something.

“Hi, Erwin.”

“Eren,” I breathe, and I have to steady myself to keep from lunging forward.

“We should talk.”

I nod dumbly and step aside to let him in.

He seats himself on my couch again, sets a plastic bag down on the coffee table. He brought breakfast, caught Lena in the hallway and told her he’d take care of cooking for the morning. His talk is light, so I just wait for him to break the surface of things. He holds out a hand to me while we’re seated and it takes me a second to realize that he wants me to take it, so I do. He doesn’t say anything then. I watch his eyes water until tears spill over onto his cheeks. I take it as the go-ahead to hold him. He stays silent for a while longer, nose buried in my shoulder, until he pulls back and trails a hand down my cheek and says the only thing he can think of.

“You’re so young.”

And I know everything’s going to be alright.

 


End file.
